


Waltzing on Glass

by ladyeternal



Series: Angelic Mates 'verse [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blindfold Sex, Canonical Character Death, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mating Bond, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Rimming, Safeword Use, Team Free Love, non-graphic torture of a minor villainous character, pseudo-Soulless!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:10:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10661352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeternal/pseuds/ladyeternal
Summary: With time drawing down against them, Team Free Love must think outside the box and use every resource at their disposal if they hope to win against two archangels bent on destroying each other.But while Sam is coming to terms with the implications of a face from his past suddenly returned to the fray, Castiel is faced with a far more difficult task:  helping Dean Winchester find his way to faith.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers:  Only if you haven’t seen past SPN Season 5 or read Good Omens
> 
> Disclaimer:  If I owned Supernatural, certain events would **_NEVER_** have happened and there would be unabashed pr0n.  I own little more than a tabby that gets destructive when he feels ignored and am only playing with these worlds for my own amusement and the free entertainment of others.
> 
> Author’s Note:  Beta’d by the truly magnificent [secondplatypus](http://secondplatypus.livejournal.com).  Written for the [2016 Castiel Big Bang](http://castielbigbang.tumblr.com/).  [Gloriously good art](http://knowmefirst.dreamwidth.org/177188.html) by the incomparable [knowmefirst.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Knowmefirst)
> 
> Feedback is adored, so if you like the fic, please comment!  And the more details the better; I love knowing what people like about my work.
> 
> Music:    
> [Heaven or Hell – Digital Daggers ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KkD-X6yoNI)  
> [My Demons - Starset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSvOTw8UH6s)  
> [Breathing - Lifehouse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9XktcQqqTY)  
> [Let My Love Open the Door - The Millennium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7kdgGIvAg)  
> This Is Why We Bleed - Leader  
> Epiphany - Staind

“We’re nowhere.”  Gamaliel’s titian hair kept falling into his face as he worked.  He and Dean were stripping usable engine parts from one of the junkers Bobby kept meaning to get to, and Dean had to admit that the help wasn’t unneeded.  Even pneumatic tools couldn’t beat angelic strength and dexterity.

“How d’ya mean?” Dean grunted from beneath the engine block.  He could see bits and patches of the angel’s face between the parts.

“I mean:  we’re nowhere,” Mal repeated.  “The cherubim loyal to Gabriel can only give us so much information, but Michael seems to have ordered the Host into a holding pattern.  Lucifer has no need to press his advantage, not until he finds a way to deal with the loss of Famine and War, and his demons are subtler than ever.  We have nothing to go on and time is rapidly running out.”

“Seems like a good time to kick the hornets’ nest, then.”  Dean pushed out from under the car and sat up.  The angel knelt and then shifted to sit cross-legged beside him, his formal angelic attire eschewed for an army-green tee shirt, dark blue jeans and steel-toed boots.  “There’s gotta be a way to get information about what Lucifer’s got his lackeys running behind the scenes. We just gotta find the weak spot.”

“That’s harder than it sounds, my friend.”  Gamaliel gave a pensive shake of his head.  “Enemies that cannot be defeated quickly learn from every skirmish.  They have learned to hide in your blind spots, Dean; and angels cannot hide our nature from Children of the Dark.”

The words pulled Dean’s muscles taut, like puppet strings suddenly taken up.  Hell had changed him too much; he hated that he couldn’t control or hide it.

Mal saw and handed Dean the grease rag he’d been toying with.  “Apologies.  I forgot for a moment-”

“Don’t,” Dean bit out.  He felt Castiel probe his emotions and shielded almost instinctively.  His mate already knew too much about the shadows Dean wanted to hide.  “Nothing to worry about.  Your better half got any ideas?”

“He and Aziraphale are trying to get in touch with Crowley,” Mal answered, concern growing with the white along Dean’s knuckles.  “He has sources of information we lack.  But it’s risky for Crowley to make contact, and Aziraphale loves him too much to press him into an unguarded move.”

“So this guy’s… what?” Dean asked, not looking up as he twisted and knotted and toyed with the rag.  The name was unusual, but not unique like angelic names.  It had to be someone else.  Someone an angel could love.  Not…. “Hougan, witch doctor?  One of those guys that worships God in quilting circles?”

Gamaliel didn’t answer right away.  The silence gnawed at Dean until he finally looked up, an unwelcome guess coalescing in his gut.  “No.”

“Dean, you must under-”

“No.”  Dean stood up, refusing to look at the angel that was scrambling to his feet.  “I am never working with one of those bastards ever again.  Especially not Crowley:  not after he sold us a bill of goods that got Ellen and Jo killed.  No.”

“He freely changed sides, Dean,” Gamaliel protested, following as Dean began to stalk away.  “He and Aziraphale have been lovers for twenty years-”

“Then Zira’s as much a damned fool as my brother was!” Dean snarled.  He rounded on the angel so fast that titian wings flared out as Mal backed away.  “You can’t trust them!  You can’t ever believe they’re on your side!  They’ll lie and plot and talk around you until you think you can, but all of it’s so you’ll never see the knife coming.  So just tell those two to come up with a new plan; ‘cause I ain’t _ever_ working with demons again.  Period.”

“Crowley can be trusted, Dean.”

A tremor ran the length of Dean’s spine as his mate’s voice washed over him.  Slowly, marshalling every last iota of calm he could manage, Dean turned to face stoic blue eyes.  “You think so?”

“If he could not be, Aziraphale would be with Father, and the last twenty years would have been drastically different for all humanity.”  Castiel watched the calculations flit across Dean’s beautiful features, the mistrust and misgivings and unwillingness to take the risk flickering behind vivid blue-green eyes.  “He risked all by coming to our aid, and even I didn’t know that the Colt would not harm Lucifer.  What good would it do Crowley to betray us now, when Hell will never forgive his earlier transgressions?”

For a moment, Dean seemed to consider it, but then rigidity returned to his frame.  Castiel fought the urge to drag him in and kiss it out of him.  “After what we just went through, I ain’t risking any of us on the idea that a demon doesn’t have their own angle to play.  Especially that snake-oil salesman.  We’ll find another way to get what we need.”

“Dean-”

“I said ‘no’, Cas.”  Dean stalked past his mate, grabbed his keys from the hook inside the kitchen door and made for the Impala.  “Tell Bobby and Sam I’m going on a milk run.”

Castiel and Gamaliel watched the car pulling away in silence.  There was a grim determination on Castiel’s face.  “We’re running out of options,” Gamaliel observed softly.

“I know,” Castiel agreed.

“Then what do we do about Dean?”

Blue eyes bored through space and time, following his mate’s path.  Dean was angry, vulnerable, in pain and afraid.  There was no time left.  “I’ll take care of it.”

“This is a bad time for him to be having a crisis of trust,” Gabriel groused, flopping down on the hard-packed dirt near the Impala.  He and Castiel had seen their humans to peaceful dreams, lingering as long as they dared before coming outside for a meeting with their brother angels.  “We need someone with Crowley’s inside connections if we’re going to have any kind of chance at pulling the plug on this mess before it’s too late.”

“Do we have a plan for how to end it, then?” Abbi asked carefully.  He was tucked between Mal’s legs, leaning back against his mate’s chest while Mal reclined against the front passenger tire of the Winchesters’ car, their fingers tangled together where Gamaliel’s arms were wrapped around his waist.  “I mean, it’s not like either Michael or Lucifer are going to back down if asked nicely.  It’s gone much too far for that.”

“I’m afraid I quite agree,” Aziraphale added.  “If we’ve any chance of ensuring that this is stopped before it can play out, we have to have a definite strategy.”

“And then be able to convince Dean that it will be successful.”  Castiel was sitting near the Impala’s back wheel, though his posture was nowhere near as relaxed as Abariel and Gamaliel’s.  “Given his current state of mind, I’m not sure that any plan he does not conceive of will meet with his approval.”

For a long moment, Gabriel sat silently, toying with a piece of scrap metal and refusing to meet the expectant gazes of the other seraphim.  They were looking to him to lead, to know the best way forward.  He should have been expecting it:  Castiel and Gamaliel were both Powers; Abariel a Virtue; Aziraphale a Principality.  Ultimately, it was instinctive for them to look to an archangel for guidance in their respective missions.

It was a mantle Gabriel had mixed feelings about taking up again, no matter how natural or necessary it might be for him to do so.

“Maybe we don’t stop it, per se,” Gabriel offered finally, sounding out the problem.  “Maybe it really has gone too far for that… at least without a couple centuries of talk therapy and no access to sharp objects.  Maybe… maybe all we need to do is contain it.”

“What do you mean?” Castiel asked, his eyes narrowing at his elder brother.

Gabriel sat up a bit straighter, his sharp face pinching in concentration.  “Abbi’s right:  the way things stand, neither Michael nor Lucifer are going to listen to reason; they’ve both been spoiling for this fight for too long.  So we don’t try to stop it from happening; we just change the setting.”  He looked up at the others, eyes bright as the idea finally took shape in his mind.  “Lock them away someplace nice and safe, built to contain angelic powers, and let them work out their issues without burning down half of Creation in the process.”

Aziraphale caught on first, his blue eyes going wide.  “With Father gone and Lilith’s blood spent… would it even be possible?”

“There’s a skeleton key to every lock; the one for the Cage was divided into four pieces.  The boys have already gathered two, and that was without even knowing what they could do with them,” Gabriel replied, thinking fast now.  “If we can get the others…”

“Wait,” Gamaliel interrupted.  “If your mates already have two, then that means the key is...”  He trailed off as realization sank in.  “You’re not serious.”

“Dean and Sam took the rings from War and Famine when they defeated them,” Castiel clarified, having caught up with the plan that Gabriel had come up with.  “If the Horsemen’s rings together act as a skeleton key to the Cage, then we must locate Pestilence and Death as quickly as possible, and somehow obtain their rings as well.”

“And after those Herculean tasks are accomplished, you propose to somehow trap both Lucifer _**and**_ Michael inside?” Abariel asked, shocked enough to sit up out of his mate’s embrace.

“It’s the only way, Abbi.”  Gabriel’s mouth was a thin, determined line as he looked into those shadowed periwinkle eyes.  “The Cage will keep them from actually being able to kill each other, and it’ll keep the fallout from anything they _do_ do to each other from escaping and damaging the rest of the living world.  It’ll also force them out of their current vessels, which will mean freeing Adam and letting that rotting corpse Luci’s wearing have a proper burial.”

Abariel twisted to look at Gamaliel when he saw no dissention being offered by Castiel or Aziraphale, his face falling when he saw Gabriel’s resolve reflected in his mate’s emerald eyes.  “I know, Abbi,” Gamaliel offered softly.  “But Gabriel’s right.  If it comes to a fight between them in the open, the deep magicks they’ll unleash will rip this world apart.”

“And so you want to subject Lucifer to more torture?” Abariel accused.  “When locking him away in that _thing_ has probably pushed him further down this path than anything else?  And Michael?”  He swung back around, fixing Gabriel in his sights.  “You know Michael’s just not sane on this subject; not with Father’s disappearance on top of everything else.  Does that really warrant sealing him away to be tormented?”

“If you can think of another option that will keep the Winchesters alive and stop our brothers from trying to cut each other to ribbons, I’d love to hear it, Abbi.”  Gabriel met Abariel’s angry expression calmly, hating the conflict between them all the same.  “Neither of you have been able to pin down where they’re holding Raguel, and this stalemate isn’t going to hold forever.  If it breaks on open ground, there’ll be nothing left of this world but dust and shadow.  We have a shot at this; we have to take it.”

Silence hung between them, leaden and expectant; Abariel’s shoulders finally slumped as he accepted the plan, his body dropping back against Gamaliel’s.  “There should be another way,” he protested softly.  “You’ve said so yourself for millennia.”

“I know,” Gabriel agreed, his own voice quiet with resignation.  “And I still want to believe that there is.  But we’ve reached a point where we have to work with what we’ve got, Abbi… for all our sakes.”

“I’ll let Crowley know that we need to locate Death and Pestilence at once, then,” Aziraphale offered.

“Tell him to come in out of the cold,” Gabriel replied.  “And that I don’t give a crap that he’s Fallen.  Let him know total amnesty’s on the table if he can bring us the information we need to get the other two rings.”

Aziraphale’s startled look melted into a watery, grateful smile as he nodded.  “He hasn’t precisely earned it, you know,” he reminded Gabriel gently.

“He does this and he will have.”  Gabriel looked to Castiel.  “I know I can get Sam on board; what about Dean?”

For a long moment, Castiel was silent, considering his own options.  “I think the solution to that problem might be similar to the strategy we’ve been discussing,” he said finally.  “I need to get him alone, completely.  Can you arrange that?”

“It’s not like we’ve got an abundance of time here, Cas,” Gabriel reminded him.  “You two going on a retreat to work on his trust issues isn’t exactly gonna fit into our schedule.”

“Not in this dimension, it won’t,” Castiel returned.  His blue eyes were sharp as they met Gabriel’s, his expression stony.

Even without their angelic connections and the mating bonds that tied them even more closely together, Gabriel would’ve understood Castiel’s meaning.  A fold in reality, like his trick in Broward County, where Castiel could spend as long as he needed to bring Dean around and yet almost no time would pass for the rest of them on the outside.  He hadn’t realized until this moment that Castiel had even known about that particular trick; it wasn’t something Sam liked talking about, and Dean had no memory of those events.  Gabriel had made certain of it:  a gesture of respect, though he doubted Dean saw it that way.

“I can’t give you more than a day,” Gabriel warned softly.  “However long that might mean on the inside.  If you’re gone more than twenty-four hours, I’ll have to pull you back out.”

Castiel nodded.  “I understand.”

“But how will you get Dean to go with you?” Abariel asked.  “You can’t very well begin to address his lack of trust in the rest of us by carrying him off into a dimensional bubble against his will.”

“Or by lying to him,” Gamaliel added.

“I will convince him,” Castiel assured them confidently.  He looked back at Gabriel.  “How long will it take to set up?”

“It’ll be ready by sunrise,” Gabriel replied, glancing at the position of the stars to gauge the time.  “Anything specific that you want?  Or should I just surprise you?”

A soft, almost sly smile turned up the corners of Castiel’s mouth.  “I believe you made it plain when Dean offered himself as bait to Zachariel exactly what you think this situation requires.”

For a moment, Gabriel almost claimed to have forgotten; the memory rushed back and he grinned wickedly at his brother.  “I think I can work with that.”


	2. Chapter 2

Light filtered against Dean’s eyelids, drawing him out of the pleasant blackness of sleep.  Bobby’s house was quiet as his eyes opened to see Castiel sitting up beside him in the bed, obviously waiting for him to wake up.  “Cas?” he rasped, his voice muddled.  “Everything okay?”

“Everything is fine for the moment, beloved,” Castiel replied quietly.

His angel was sitting too still, too removed from him.  Since they’d become lovers, Dean had rarely woken to find Castiel not still tangled around him in a protective embrace.  He sat up and turned, looking Castiel full in the face.  “What’s going on?”

Castiel could sense the anxiety rolling off Dean in waves, knew he was possibly making this harder.  He also knew this was why what he had planned was so necessary to begin with.  “If I asked you to come with me right now, would you do it?  Without asking our destination or mission?”

For a moment, Dean floundered.  Castiel had been secretive about many things in the year they’d known one another, but their mating had seemingly brought an end to that.  For Castiel to revert to that form now twisted an ugly knot in Dean’s stomach.  “Depends, I guess.”

“It cannot depend, Dean,” Castiel replied carefully.  “It must be either yes or no.  Will you come?”

Uncertain, thrown by Castiel’s insistence, Dean tried to reach out through their bond.  It was different than reaching out to Sam:  at the end of the day, his little brother was still human, with a mind and soul built like his own.  Castiel was different:  all rippling music and kaleidoscope colors, difficult to find a pattern in unless there was something he wanted Dean to see or read.  And his angel seemed disinclined to be read by his mate at the moment.

But he was still Castiel.  Still the angel that had rescued him from Hell and burned most of the Darkness from his soul.  Still the seraphim that had rebelled against Heaven in his name, whose sword Dean could still feel against his back if he stopped paying attention to the world around him long enough.

Still his mate, who had seen all that was inside him, and loved him anyway.

“Okay,” he agreed, reaching out to slip a hand into Castiel’s where it rested atop the sheet.  “The others know we’re going?”

“The other angels do,” Castiel answered simply.  “They will see to telling Sam and Bobby.”

Before Dean could open his mouth to say anything else, the world vanished in a soundless shout.

They landed in a space unlike anything Dean expected:  rather than abandoned and decrepit, or ancient and smelling of old faith and disrepair, they were in what appeared to be a spacious living room.  Bright sunlight was streaming through what Dean thought at first were windows, but in reality were walls made entirely of glass.  One panel was clearly designed to slide open, leading out onto a stone patio with a verdant meadow just beyond, encircled by dense woods.

“Cas, what the Hell?”  Dean turned to look at his angel, who seemed completely unsurprised by their surroundings.  Just behind Castiel was a sofa upholstered in what looked like sueded leather, long and deep enough that Dean could easily imagine how soft it would be against his skin if he laid Castiel out across it… how easy it would be to make love on it without worrying about one of them falling off because they moved wrong…  “Where are we?”

“A safe place,” Castiel replied, watching Dean take in their surroundings and sensing the spike of desire that had pulsed through Dean when he’d seen the couch behind them.  He’d noticed that Gabriel’s penchant for luxury appealed to Dean’s sensibilities on more than one level, and while this was far from the first time he’d been glad of it, he knew it was critical that Dean be comfortable for what needed to come next to happen.  “Gabriel arranged it for us.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and the step he took towards his mate was almost meant to be intimidating.  “I think I want an explanation, Cas… right the fuck now.”

Purposely ignoring Dean’s attempt to domineer the answers out of him, Castiel reached out and took his mate’s right wrist in hand, leading him to the sofa and seating himself.  Dean sat beside him at Castiel’s gentle tug, though his blue-green eyes were no less suspicious.  “You need a respite, Dean.  The others will continue the work while we’re here.”

“I’m fine,” Dean replied, a snap of impatience in his tone.  “I’m… awesome.  We don’t have time for this, Cas; we need to get back-”

“The others have things in hand.”  Castiel’s tone hardened just a touch, his expression turning steely.  “You can trust our brothers and friends, can you not?  For a few hours, at least?”

“It ain’t about that,” Dean snapped.

“It is about exactly that,” Castiel refuted calmly.  “We are rapidly coming to a point where decisions must be made at a moment’s notice and there will be no time for debate or doubt in each other.”

Dean’s eyes rounded in shock.  “This is about my not wanting to work with _Crowley_?  You’re sidelining me so they can bring in a damned _crossroads demon_?!”

Castiel watched patiently as Dean’s outrage carried him to his feet and set him pacing, his boxers bunching between his strong thighs as he moved.  It made his mouth go dry for want of running his hands along the tender skin, to feel those powerful muscles wrapped around his waist as he moved in the tight heat of Dean’s beautiful body.  But his advances would be unwelcome at this precise moment and Castiel knew it.

“This is more fundamental than whether or not we accept Crowley’s aid,” he opted to say instead, “though I can understand your reluctance.”

“I should fucking well hope so!” Dean snarled acidly.  “He got Ellen and Jo killed!”

“No, he didn’t.”  Castiel watched as Dean paused and turned to face him, then stood up and stepped into Dean’s space.  “And neither did you.”

He saw the ripple of shock go through Dean’s body, vulnerability flashing in his viridian eyes as his lips trembled around a denial that wouldn’t form.  A throbbing ache transmitted along the bond before Dean could shield it, and Castiel wanted to reach out, to let Dean fall into his arms and grieve.

“You couldn’t have known,” Castiel continued gently, watching the way Dean’s body almost vibrated from the restraints Dean was holding himself in.  “Joanna knew the risks we were facing that day.  And when the worst came to pass, Ellen didn’t want to live in a world where her daughter was dead.  That decision was not your responsibility.”

“They were only there because I asked them for help,” Dean protested, though his voice caught on the words.

“Yes,” Castiel agreed.  “But what would you have done if they’d said no?”  The question visibly startled Dean; Castiel let himself move just a fraction closer.  “The answer is:  nothing.  You would have respected their choice, and either tried to find other hunters to help, or the three of us would’ve gone to Carthage on our own.  Since you would not have forced them to aid us, you are not responsible for the consequences of their choice.  The demon that unleashed the Hellhounds on us is responsible for their deaths.  Not you.”

Unable to bear the intense blue of that gaze for another moment, Dean pulled back from his mate, turned his face away and dropping onto the couch again.  “That still don’t make working with a demon a good idea.”

“Perhaps not.”  Castiel moved to Dean’s side again, but rather than sitting beside him on the couch, he knelt down beside Dean’s left leg, placing one hand on Dean’s bare knee.  Dean shivered at the contact, though the skin of Castiel’s palm was warm to the touch.  “But we both know that’s not the reason you’re fighting us on this.”

For a long moment, Dean was silent, refusing to look at the angel kneeling so temptingly at his feet.  It wasn’t the first time that Castiel had talked him around, and Dean again had the overwhelming sense that he would’ve agreed willingly to become Michael’s Vessel if it had been Castiel attempting to persuade him rather than Zachariah.

He wasn’t entirely sure that he was uncomfortable with that notion.

“You’re seriously taking me out of play over _Crowley_ ,” Dean repeated, slowly turning his gaze back to his mate.

“I’m not ‘taking you out of play’ at all,” Castiel corrected gently.

“Well, it sure as fuck feels like you are!” Dean shot back, temper rising again.  The flare of anger backed off when his mate’s expression went stony, their bond flashing with Castiel’s shortening patience for Dean’s defensive outbursts.  Castiel had patience enough to outwait entire solar systems, but somehow, Dean always managed to find the boundaries of that boundless forbearance.  “Sorry,” he muttered, deflating a little.  “I just hate the zen master shit, Cas.  You got something to say to me?  Just say it straight, okay?”

“You are acting out of fear.”  Dean’s entire body went tense as strung wire at the blunt statement, but Castiel pressed on before his hunter could argue.  “There is no shame in fear, Dean:  we are all afraid, and that fear motivates us, helps us stay alive and focused on our mission.  But there is a fine line between letting fear motivate you and allowing it to hobble you.

“The burden on your shoulders is not an easy one to bear,” he continued, reaching up to wind his hands into Dean’s as he gazed up at the stiff mask that Dean’s face had become, those blue-green eyes the only windows to the turmoil Castiel was stirring up behind it.  “You are Michael’s avatar, and as such, leadership comes naturally to you.  But all effective leaders learn how to lay it down, if only for a little while, so that they may grieve their losses and recover their strength.  This is not a failing; it is a fact.  And so here we are.”

For a long moment, Dean was silent; Castiel could feel the conflicted tumble of emotion and reaction from his mate along the bond, unshielded and laid bare for him alone.  He longed to make this easier for Dean, to reassure this beautiful man that it really was all right to let someone else take the weight for a time.  That the world would not fall to ruin if he faltered, because his mate and his brother and Gabriel would be there to carry him until he could walk again.

A fine tremor ran through Dean as he sensed the image of Castiel’s thought, a sheen that might have been the start of tears coming into his eyes.  “We haven’t got time,” Dean protested, his voice rough and catching on the words.

“We are making the time,” Castiel disagreed.

“I’m not Michael, you know.”

“No,” Castiel agreed.  “You are smarter than he is, and more adaptable.  A fact of which I am perfectly aware and for which I am eternally grateful.”

Dean snorted at that, the deadpan humor made even funnier by the fact that Castiel was also dead serious.  Those blue eyes held his own, unerringly tunneling through all of his defenses in a way that only Castiel could manage.  There was such acceptance in them…

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Dean found himself asking.

It earned him a smile, fond and proud and happy, and warmth spilled across the bond that was like the sun coming out after a cold drizzling rain.  “Gabriel had several suggestions,” the angel answered.  There was a sly note to his voice that sent thrills tripping down Dean’s spine.  “But he still has a faintly vicious edge when it comes to you, so I declined in favor of something simpler.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up at that.  His mouth opened to ask even as Castiel’s right hand untangled from his left and dipped into one of the interior pockets of the trench coat to retrieve something.

The words died before they could find voice as a length of black silk spilled from either side of Castiel’s palm, shining softly in the shimmering daylight.

For a long moment, Dean couldn’t breathe.  Only one sash, long enough to bind, the sheen of its softness beckoning to his skin.  There was a low throb in his blood, in his mind; he’d gone fully erect almost without realizing it.  His mouth was dry with a want he couldn’t name, yearning towards what Castiel seemed to be offering.

“Only if you agree.”  That deep gravel voice was softer now, but there was an undercurrent that pulled at Dean like the tide, touching the places that ached for his mate’s possession.

His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips.  He couldn’t take his eyes off the silk hanging from his mate’s grip:  not a challenge, but an offer.  “What about you?” he half-croaked.  “Is this something you want, Cas?”

Though Dean wasn’t looking, he could sense the smile that curled across that sensual mouth.  “I would not offer if it wasn’t, beloved.”

His breath hitched, and Dean’s eyes tore themselves away from the black sash to look Castiel full in the face.  Heat greeted him:  smoldering and cleansing, a holy flame that freed rather than caged.  Dean felt himself caught in that fire, wanted to let it consume him as it had in the depths of the Pit.  “Yes.”

Castiel’s smile broadened with something like pride.  “Then be still for me.”

And then he was shifting, taking the ends of the sash in both hands and swiftly knotted the ends.  Dean didn’t have to wonder long before Castiel lifted it, still in that two-handed grip, and eased the circle over the top of Dean’s head.

The silk settled across his eyes, hugging the contours of his face even as Castiel carefully adjusted the loose knot to secure the blindfold in place.  “Is it too tight?”

“No.”  Dean couldn’t help reaching up, his fingers tracing the edge without trying to move it.  He’d always had a weakness for soft fabrics:  the slide of satin or the kiss of leather or the easy drape of cotton.  It shook him a little, how easy it was to accept the cling of the blindfold against his skin, the way it blotted out his vision and left him vulnerable to what his other senses might not detect.  “No, it’s good.”

A soft hum was the angel’s only response for a moment.  He stood and urged Dean to his feet, circling him; Dean’s ears tracked the movement on instinct, locking on the rustle of Castiel’s never-changing clothing.

“We are the only ones here, Dean,” Castiel reminded him.  Those long, dexterous fingers found his waist, gliding beneath the cotton tee and coming to rest on the taper of his hips.  “You can stop now.”

“Stop what?”  Dean wanted to reach out, to fumble his way through Castiel’s clothes and find the soft skin underneath.  But Cas had asked him to be still, and Dean wanted to try.  Wanted to not let his mate down yet again.

“Stop tracking for danger.”  Those fingers fisted around the hem of his shirt on both sides, dragged it slowly up Dean’s body.  His arms lifted without prompting, letting the angel tug the garment over Dean’s head and off his body without dislodging the blindfold.

There was no breath in the air but Dean’s own at first.  Slowly, in the quiet, Dean began to hear the delicate cadence of Castiel’s breathing, deep and sure and unhurried.  It was almost hypnotic, how easily Dean found himself falling into that rhythm, his senses focusing on the nearly undetectable susurration.  Castiel’s fingers touched down again, the tips gliding across Dean’s skin, tracing the contours of his muscles.  Dean’s breath hitched as the contact sang across his nerves, electric as it raced through his body and tangled at the base of his spine.

He almost didn’t notice as his boxers were eased past his hips, slipping down his legs to puddle around his ankles.  “Cas?”

“You’re so beautiful.”  His fingertips slid over the taper of Dean’s waist, his thumbs slotting into the ‘V’ cuts of Dean’s hips and rubbing almost reverently.  The near-worship in that voice washed over Dean’s senses even as Castiel stepped closer, pressing his clothed body up against Dean’s naked one as he brought their mouths together.

A sound that might have started as a shout whimpered from Dean’s throat as the angel’s mouth caught his and pressed it open, tongue sweeping past Dean’s lips with no trace of hesitation.  The grip on Dean’s hips tightened, pulling them flush against Castiel’s, friction from the hard ridge of the angel’s arousal sheathed in polyester riding against Dean’s own erection blooming across his skin like a shockwave.

Knees buckling, he grabbed at Castiel’s arms even as that mouth eased away from his own.  The fraction of space between them felt like loss and Dean’s mouth yearned towards the place Castiel’s had gone, drawing an indulgent chuckle from the angel.  “It’s all right, Dean.  I’m not going anywhere… except perhaps in search of a bed we can continue this on.”

The words tugged at something, but Dean pushed it aside.  He was too raw right now, flayed open by the eroticism his mate was wielding.  “Sounds good to me,” he answered instead, trying to keep his voice from betraying how badly he wanted and failing.

Another soft kiss, and then Castiel’s left hand lifted from Dean’s hip to twine with his right hand. “Follow me, then,” Castiel instructed gently, leading him from the room.

Dean followed the steady pull of Castiel’s hand, noting that his angel was silent even when wearing Jimmy Novak’s dress shoes.  There was an unnerving quality to the realization:  to knowing that his mate could be so silent that Dean wouldn’t know he was there if not for the bond between them.  That if Castiel wanted to be concealed from Dean’s senses, then he would be, whereas Dean had no such reciprocal capacity.

The sensual haze Castiel had woven around him began to recede as they walked, and Dean couldn’t help cataloging the number of steps they took, the impassive coolness of the ceramic tile beneath his bare feet.  No steps or stairs; the entire house seemed to be on a single floor.  And while the blindfold didn’t let him see one way or the other, the warmth radiating over his skin told him that the walls continued as glass panels, letting sunlight bathe the interior of the house.

“You’re still doing it,” Castiel remonstrated.

“Doing what?”  Dean’s brow knitted above the blindfold, shifting the material against the tender skin around his eyes and at his temples.  It didn’t move enough to grant him a shaft of light, but the caress of the motion made his pulse skip.

“We are alone, Dean,” Castiel reminded him again, coming to a stop.  His hands returned to Dean’s hips, a firm pressure guiding Dean around until he was standing where the angel wanted him.  “You don’t need to strategize here.  While you wear that blindfold, you are in my care.  The layout of the house need not concern you; there are no traps awaiting the unwary.  There are no enemies waiting for us to let our guard down and no creatures hunting us from the shadows.”

Something in Dean shook at that; something buried deeper than even he’d known, that had been curled up tight and hidden since a perfectly ordinary November night, when the child he’d been had first seen what the monsters in the shadows were capable of.  “Cas…”

“There is nothing to fear here, Dean,” Castiel continued.  The pressure on his hips guided Dean to the edge of the floor, and then Castiel was stepping off and lifting Dean by the waist, lowering him until his feet connected with something soft.  “You are safe with me.  You can stop now.”

The words wove around him, and Dean shook his head against them, refusing to accept them.  It couldn’t be true.  There was always something waiting.  Always another shoe to drop.  They’d been lying in wait for Sam since before Dean had even been born...

“There isn’t,” Castiel refuted; Dean startled to realize that he’d been speaking aloud.  “I made sure before I brought you here.  Trust me, beloved.  Just let it go.”

“No.”  Dean pushed back, taking a step.  The softness beneath them gave just enough, and Dean was stumbling, dropping into the pillowy surface beneath them.  He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, something like panic gripping at his chest.  He couldn’t see… he was cut off… “Where’s Sammy?”

Castiel’s hands found him again, the cushion dipping as the angel knelt at Dean’s side and pulled him up to his knees.  “Sam is with Gabriel, Dean.”  That voice was strident now, sure and calm and somehow commanding.  “He’s with his mate, and Gabriel will defend Sam with his life.  He did against Lucifer and he will again if necessary.”

Dean was shaking; when had he started shaking?  His whole body felt suddenly alive with a need to move, to secure the thresholds and find his brother and keep them both safe.  “I need to…”

“No, you don’t.”  Castiel had him by the upper arms, grip firm but not harsh.  “You are safe here, Dean.  Sam is safe with Gabriel, and you are safe here with me.  It’s all right.”

“Cas, I can’t see.”  Dean could hear the panic in his own voice, though he made no move to take off the blindfold that Castiel had placed so reverently over his eyes.  “Cas, please, I can’t…”

“You can,” Castiel encouraged.  “It’s all right, Dean.  You can do this.”

“I can’t.”

“You can-”

“Harmony.”

The safe word was out before Dean knew the shape of it had been forming on his tongue.  Without hesitation, one of Castiel’s hands lifted to the side of his face, edging under the blindfold and carefully pulling it away.  When Dean opened his eyes, Castiel was still there, his blue eyes intent and his expression tight with concern.

“Sorry.”  There was a lump in Dean’s throat he hadn’t known was forming.  His cheeks were wet with tears he hadn’t even been aware were dripping from his eyes.

“Don’t be.”  Gently, with no trace of recrimination, Castiel guided Dean to lie down on the cushion beneath them.  It took a moment for Dean to register that almost it took up almost the entire floor of the room, with mounds of pillows lining the edges and shelves recessed into the walls just within arm’s reach.  “We can try again later, if you want.”

One heartbeat lurched in his chest.  Another.  And then Dean was curled into Castiel’s arms, tears soaking the shoulder of the trench coat that had come to represent safety in a way that nothing else had in more than twenty years.  And through it all, Castiel held him, murmuring reassurance and comfort until grief spent itself into sleep in the safety of his mate’s arms.


	3. Chapter 3

~ooooOOOoooo~

“Are you sure about this?”

Gabriel watched Sam pacing, anxiety clear to see even if he couldn’t have felt it bleeding through their bond.  “Trust me, gorgeous.  Your big bro needed a break before he snapped like a rubber band.  Cassi’ll take care of him, and they’ll be back before you know it.”

“It’s not a great time for it,” Sam objected, though it was halfhearted at best.  He’d seen the effects of the strain they’d all been under on Dean, but his elder brother had never listened to him about when it was a good time to take a step back.  When Dean was locked into a hunt, nothing could sway him until whatever they were hunting was dead.

“It never is,” Gabriel agreed.  “But I’d rather squeeze in the time and have his head on straight when it counts than have him locked up in his head at a critical moment.”  He reached out, snagging Sam’s wrist and tugging him over to the couch.  “We need him, Sam.  That means we need him functioning.”

There was a note in Gabriel’s voice that brought Sam down beside his mate, opening his arms when Gabriel immediately climbed into his lap to kiss him.  “And Crowley?” he asked when the archangel released his lips.  “You’re sure about him, too?”

“Sure as anyone can be of a Fallen.”  At Sam’s cocked eyebrow, Gabriel sighed and shook his head.  “I know.  But we’re playing a crap hand and getting damn close to skint.  Crowley never loses no matter how the game plays out, and if he doesn’t have intel on what Luci’s forces are up to, he can get it.”

“His information was spectacularly lacking when it came to the Colt,” Sam pointed out.

“Cassi’s wasn’t any better,” Gabriel countered.  “If I’d been around then, I could’ve told you that Lucifer’s one of the few beings that gun can’t kill.  So if you wanna blame anybody for you not knowing that tidbit before going after him in Carthage, blame me for not pulling my head out of my ass about you sooner.”

Sam smiled gently, a soft laugh huffing out in response.  “I think I’ll just be glad you did at all, if it’s all the same to you.”

Something in Gabriel uncurled at that, and he shifted in for another deep kiss.  Sam groaned into it, his hands splaying across the archangel’s slim back and pulling him in closer, until the stirring of the archangel’s interest was fitted against his own want.  “Insatiable,” he murmured, grinning against his mate’s lips.

“You know it, gorgeous,” Gabriel replied gamely.  “Too bad we can only have one Winchester out on sexcation at a time, or I’d be whisking you off to Fiji right now.”

Sam was still laughing at that outrageousness when they felt the shift of an incoming visitor through the wards.  There was a sound in Sam’s mind, like the flutter of dark wings, just before the newcomer manifested in Bobby’s kitchen near the table where Aziraphale had been reading with a mug of cocoa.

“We really need to talk about your taste in safe havens, angel.”

Despite the anger that welled up in Sam at the sound of that voice, there was something compelling in the way Aziraphale’s head lifted in response.  In the widening of those robin’s egg eyes and the vague breathlessness of the smile that pulled across his lips.  And then he was moving, as swift and sure as Gabriel had ever advanced on Sam after they’d been apart:  a gravitational pull that neither even considered resisting.

“Crowley.”  Zira’s voice was warm, full of affection and relief as they closed together, and the answering murmur of ‘angel’ was lost as their lips met.  Too deep and hungry to be chaste, too brief to be a spectacle.  Just loving, passion undimmed by time and distance.

Gabriel kissed the underside of Sam’s jaw, nestling closer, and Sam could admit that maybe it wasn’t so hard to understand.  That if Gabriel could love him, maybe there was something in Crowley that Aziraphale had found to love as well.

“I mean it,” Crowley said as their lips finally parted, one hand reaching up to pluck a stray piece of lint from the angel’s cardigan.  “The shops were one thing; but this place?  Really?”

“I didn’t choose it,” Aziraphale protested, a long-suffering tone in his voice that Sam would’ve sworn was reserved for old married couples.  “If you want to register a complaint, you can speak with Gabriel about it.”

“Oh, I doubt it was his idea, either.”  Crowley glanced past his angel towards where Gabriel was still tucked into Sam’s lap, a withering expression on his face.  “Not knowing some of the hideaways he’s built for himself over the years.  No, the choice of this place smacks of a pair of denim-clad morons that are only still alive by sheer bloody luck.”

“Nice to see you again too, Crowley,” Sam replied, his tone deceptively light.  “How ‘bout a drink?  Scotch and holy water, right?”

“As if I’d trust your liquor cabinet.”  Crowley pulled a flask and waved it at Sam.  “Can we get down to business?  We don’t exactly have ages here.”

Climbing down from Sam’s lap, Gabriel’s entire bearing shifted.  No longer languorous and aroused, there was something commanding in the frame of his body that made Sam’s breath catch and shallow in his throat; something that was every bit the archangel that had once stood at the left hand of God.  “You have the intel we need?” he asked, his tone brisk.

“After a fashion.”  When Gabriel’s expression darkened, Crowley put his hands up defensively.  “Now don’t get all smitey about things; you know perfectly bloody well that I’m not exactly welcome on the ninth circle.  But I _did_ manage to locate a source of information that is unimpeachable.  We play this right, and we can put our hands on Pestilence’s ring before the week’s out.”

“You’re sure this time?” Sam asked, rising from his seat on the couch.  “Because if this has holes in it like the line you fed us about the Colt…”

“No, this is solid,” Crowley protested.  “But the window’s closing on getting access.  If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now.”  He glanced around.  “So where’s Squirrel?”  When the moniker got no response beyond furrows of confusion, he rolled his eyes.  “You know:  the shorter Teen Beat model.”

“Dean’s unavailable,” Bobby informed him, having come in from outside with Abariel and Gamaliel behind him.

“Oh, perfect.”  Crowley swung to look accusingly at Aziraphale.  “How long were you planning to keep that to yourself, angel?  We can’t use the Moose for this.”

“How, precisely, was I to know it was relevant?” Aziraphale countered smoothly.  “It’s not as if you’ve told me anything.”

“Why exactly do you need Dean, anyway?” Gamaliel asked, a hint of a defensive challenge in his voice.

“Because if we’re going to find Pestilence,” Crowley explained with exaggerated patience, “we need to capture his Number Two and convince him to talk.  I know where the boot-licker will be for the moment, but he’s surrounded by demons.  I walk in there with an angel and he’ll be gone like the building’s on fire.”

“And Sam can’t spearhead your infiltration because…?” Gamaliel prompted.

“He’ll kill the target.”  Crowley’s voice was flat even as he gave Sam a sidelong glance, catching the startled expression on Sam’s face that melted into indignant fury.  “Look, it’s nothing personal, Moose:  but you didn’t spend thirty years as Alastair’s apprentice, let alone the best he’d had in a millennium.  Your brother has the patience and the ruthlessness to get past the guards, help capture Pestilence’s lackey and get the information we need out of him.  You clap eyes on the slimy little toad and you’ll gut him where he stands.  You won’t be able to help yourself.”

Gabriel just barely had time to spin around and put a hand on Sam’s chest to keep him from advancing on Crowley.  “Sam.”

“See what I mean?” Crowley continued, seemingly nonplussed by Sam’s murderous intent.  “No self-control.  We can’t afford for him to lose that temper; not this time.”

“Well, Dean’s indisposed just now,” Bobby replied acidly.  “So if it’s a human you need, looks like it’s you and me.”

Crowley turned, one eyebrow quirked as he assessed the elder hunter.  “This the one you were telling me about, angel?”

“Messire Singer’s library is surprisingly complete,” Aziraphale confirmed.  “And he might not have the enhanced physical attributes of the Vessels, but he’s quite good.”

Sighing, Crowley faced Gabriel again.  “You’re sure we can’t just go fetch Dean from wherever that little Power has him tucked away?  This would really go much more smoothly with him along.”

“Positive,” Gabriel said, a note of finality in his voice.  “It’s Singer or Sam.  Take your pick.”

“Fine,” Crowley huffed.  “Just find someplace to do this that’s not here and get it warded.  If things get dicey, we don’t want to be cleaning ichor out of the carpets.”

When Dean woke again, daylight still flooded through the glass walls of the house.  It disoriented him for a moment, confusing his sense of time, and his eyes scanned for anything that might tell him how long he’d been asleep in Castiel’s arms.

“How are you feeling?”

Castiel was pushing himself up from the pillows as Dean turned to look at him; he’d shed the trench coat and most of the other layers of clothing he wore, down to a plain white undershirt and faded navy blue boxers.  It was possibly the most casual Dean had ever seen him appear when they weren’t between rounds of sex.  “Fine,” he replied automatically.  “How long was I out?”

“Since time doesn’t have any meaning here, as long as your body needed you to be.”  Crossing his legs, Castiel looked Dean over assessingly.  “And ‘fine’ is not an acceptable answer, given what happened.  How are you feeling?”

“Really, Cas?”  Dean’s skeptical expression was met with expectant challenge from the angel, and Dean knew there wouldn’t be any getting around the issue.  “I…”  He sighed.  “Kinda wrung out, actually.  Look, I didn’t mean to blow the whole sexy blindfold experiment-”

“It was not an experiment,” Castiel interrupted.

Dean’s brow furrowed.  “Then what was it?”

“A way for you to give yourself permission to rely on someone else.”  Castiel reached out, his right hand finding Dean’s left and tangling their fingers together.  “For you to let go of the burden of being the one responsible for everyone’s safety, everyone’s decisions, everyone’s expectations.  To give yourself permission to be taken care of for once.”

For a long moment, Dean didn’t know how to respond.  The stillness of the world around them, the brilliance of the light filling the room, seemed somehow to leave Dean with nowhere to hide.  “I... don’t know how to do that,” he finally confessed quietly.  “Cas, that’s never been in the cards for me.  Maybe it was when I was a kid, before Mom got burned and monsters turned out to be real, but not for a long time.”

“Perhaps,” Castiel agreed.  “But that’s not true anymore.”

A wry smile touched Dean’s lips.  “You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks, Cas.”

Castiel frowned in consternation.  “If you are more adaptable than the Highest of the Host, you are certainly more capable of learning new skills than an elderly canine.”  Dean laughed, and Castiel’s expression turned irritated.  “I thought we agreed to stop making light of my unfamiliarity with human colloquialisms.”

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean chortled, composing himself.  “We did; you’re right.”  Putting on his most appealing expression, he let his eyes go wide.  “Forgive me?”

Huffing in annoyance, Castiel pretended to consider it for a moment.  Dean’s eyes were on the edge of becoming truly concerned when Castiel lunged forward, tackling his mate back onto the pillows and pinning him down with his own weight.  Dean’s already-wide eyes went defenseless beneath him, generous lips parted in breathless surprise.  “I would forgive you anything, beloved.  You know that.”  Dean’s mouth closed, a trembling line, and Castiel bent to brush a warm kiss over the seam of them.  “I love you, Dean.  Please… let me help.”

Another kiss grazed over his lips, and Dean let them open, let himself seal his mouth against Castiel’s as his eyes drifted closed again.  It was easy to lose himself in this:  the blanketing warmth of his angel’s weight draped over his own, the softness of his skin and the delicate silk of his hair, the tiny sounds that Castiel made in his throat as they mapped each other’s mouths.  This was safe, familiar and yet new, a place where nothing was expected of him but to please and be pleasured.

Castiel’s mouth lifted, just for a moment; Dean’s eyes opened and he was caught by the intense blue once again.  The devotion.  The implacable obstinacy.  Wonder and loyalty and even traces of awe.

“Do it,” he heard himself say, knowing in a heartbeat that he could now.  That he could be blind, and trust the angel that had saved him to watch his back.  And more than that, Dean wanted to give his mate that trust.  To take back what the shadows had stolen from him as a child.

Castiel blinked once, twice, his expression drawing wide in surprise.  “Are you certain?”

Unable to speak, afraid of losing his nerve or letting his bravado falter over the bond, Dean nodded and then tugged at Castiel’s undershirt, yanking it up over the astonished angel’s head.  He leaned up as Castiel twisted to find where the blindfold had been placed on the recessed shelf beside the bed, running his tongue over one of his mate’s dusky nipples and then pinching with his teeth.

It drew a gasp from his angel even as he dropped back against the pillows again, watching hungrily as Castiel retrieved the silk.  Rather than fit it around Dean’s head immediately, Castiel fell upon Dean instead, his hips slotting against Dean’s when the hunter’s legs slid apart and his lips finding the underside of Dean’s jaw, sucking a dark bruise into the hollow of Dean’s pulse.

The moan Dean let out was heartfelt, uninhibited.  There was no one to hear; not that he much cared when there was.  His hips ground up against Castiel’s weight almost of their own volition, the friction so delicious against his renewed arousal that he wrapped his legs around Castiel’s waist for better leverage.

“Dean…”  It growled out even as Castiel trailed tiny, sharp bites along the line of Dean’s neck, the spikes of heat dragging little whines out of his throat as the angel’s hips rode back down against him.

“Cas, please…”  The silk was in one of the hands that slid possessively over his skin, the contrast so maddening that Dean could barely breathe.  His arms slid around Castiel’s shoulders, fingers digging into the muscles where his mate’s wings should’ve been.  “Need you so bad…”

Another growl, and then Castiel pulled himself away from leaving a string of love marks on Dean’s collarbone.  Fine tremors raced through Dean’s body as they stared at each other, and then Castiel was carefully fitting the loop of silk back over Dean’s eyes.

The world slid away and Dean’s breath hitched, listening at once not for danger, but for his mate.  For Castiel, who had promised to never leave him.  Reassurance came instantly, pulsing through the bond like a second heart beside his own.  The long-fingered hands that had learned him so well followed, guiding Dean over onto his stomach and tracing down the long bow of his spine.

Another shiver wracked him as Dean shifted, his erection trapped against his body by the pillow that Castiel had positioned to support Dean’s hips.  His angel was letting his fingers map Dean’s body at leisure now, unconcerned for time or urgency, the fingertips softer than Dean’s own and light as the feathers that Dean wished he could sink his own hands into when Castiel’s wings manifested.

Kisses began to fall in their wake:  some so brief that Dean couldn’t be sure they were real; others a lingering draw of lips along the flex and curve of a muscle that had leaped in response to his angel’s caress.  And all the while tenderness flowed through the bond and into his soul as easily as an eddy at a riverbank:  desire and affection suffusing him with warmth even as every touch only deepened the way he ached to be filled.  “Cas…”

“Patience, beloved.”  The words murmured up from the bow of Dean’s spine, accompanied by a whisper of air that made Dean’s body spasm and his hips push back in search of the weight they wanted.  “So eager…”

“Well, I was thinking I was going to get fucked sometime this year,” Dean shot back, frustrated by the way Castiel’s hips canted away from his own and unable to get any real friction against the pillow beneath him.  “So yeah-”

A flat palm connected with his left buttock, stinging and sharp even as it glanced off.  Heat bloomed and Dean’s entire body jerked like he’d become a live wire, a cry driven past his lips even as his fingers fisted into the sheets.

He could almost feel the cocked eyebrow through the bond.  “I’ll have to remember that,” was all the angel said, his hands smoothing possessively over the firm muscles of Dean’s backside.

Dean wanted to say that he could remember it as often as he wanted, that he’d better do more than remember because that had been hotter than Hell.  But the words wouldn’t come, tangled around themselves on a tongue that didn’t remember how to form them…

And then those fingers parted his cheeks, making room for the flat of Castiel’s clever tongue to draw with deliberate slowness along the sensitive muscle hidden there, and words stopped mattering altogether.

The darkness drawn across his eyes by the blindfold was nothing like the neutral blankness of eyes screwed closed from sensation.  The black engulfing him and the silence of the house made everything louder, closer, sharper.  It should’ve been embarrassing, how clearly he heard the slick of Castiel’s tongue as it slicked across him.  Instead it infused through him like sunlight baking into his bones, making him shameless for the way his mate teased him, tracing the sensitive pucker with just the tip before dragging the flat across it in another long swipe that felt like a thunderclap at the base of his spine.

Those powerful, nimble hands caught his hips, pulling gently, and Dean’s entire body shoved back in response until his knees were under him and his lower body was canted up and he was presenting, offering up whatever the angel wanted to take, his arms folding to cradle his head as that tongue prodded and pressed, finally breaching him and shoving a cry past the strangled mess of sounds throbbing in his throat.

“That’s it, beloved.”  The words puffed across his sensitized flesh and Dean cried out again, his entire body jerking in response.  “Let me hear you… let me hear how I make you feel…”

“Empty.”  The word blurted out before Dean could even try and frame the thought to hold it back, inhibitions lost in the maelstrom.  “So fucking empty without you, Cas… need you in me… need you to open me up… ride me hard… fucking Hell, Cas, I need you so bad, please…”

“Soon,” Castiel promised, his tongue slipping back inside Dean’s body and returning to its leisurely exploration.

The feel of it set Dean babbling, begging, pleading for more than just that wriggling muscle within him.  Castiel didn’t seem to be listening as he continued to tease the fluttering rim, to sink his tongue as deep as he could and drag the flat along the tight muscles that tried to grip at it, all the while making tiny sounds in the back of his throat.  Sounds that went straight to Dean’s neglected erection, which now wept steadily for want of even the meager friction of the pillow that it was no longer pressed against.

Castiel’s left hand shifted, the thumb brushing down into Dean’s cleft.  Dean shuddered, his breath little more than shallow pants that exploded from his lungs with an almost pained shout as the digit folded in alongside Castiel’s tongue, sinking to the base and exerting gentle pressure on his inner wall as Castiel’s mouth latched on to drag a deep, sucking kiss on the other side.  “Cas!... Cas, please… please, Cas, I can’t… I need… Castiel!”

The kiss retreated; the angel’s whole mouth backed off, moved, mouthing kisses over the crest of Dean’s right buttock.  Dean moaned at the loss, bucking back against Castiel’s face in search of more, begging for what he needed.  “You can,” Castiel told him, implacable as the ocean, as the mountains, as the deep black that Dean was falling through like a night without stars.  “You can, and you will.  It’s all right, Dean.  Just let go.”

Another pleading wail, and then that mouth was back on him, tongue driving deep and two fingers gliding into the spit-slick flesh right alongside it, staying inside as the tongue withdrew and scissoring him open, working him wide, hooking to pass over the bundle of nerves at random intervals and Dean was gasping as his body coiled tighter and tighter…

“Let go, beloved,” Castiel told him.  “I’m right here.”

And then the angel sank a sharp lovebite into the ridge of hypertrophic scar he’d left on Dean’s right cheek during their mating.

The world exploded behind Dean’s eyes, the angel’s name tearing out of his throat as his entire body seemed to shatter in Castiel’s grip.  The fingers inside him stopped teasing and came to rest on his prostate:  a solid, steady pressure that built and broke in the aftermath, suspending Dean within crashing waves of pleasure until his breath came in ragged sobs, his limbs spent and heavy and unable to support him.

Dimly, he could sense the warm shadows of Castiel’s wings draping over him, sheltering him as he was eased away from the wet spot caused by his orgasm and down onto the cushion.  Castiel was spooned up behind him, arms cradling Dean close as Dean floated in the haze.  “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”  The question was followed by a gentle kiss to the shoulder, reassuring rather than erotic.

“You didn’t…”  He faltered, words lost for a moment.

Another kiss in almost the exact spot as the first.  “Not yet.”

Confusion tried to push in, an undercurrent beneath the deep lassitude of release.  “Why not?”

“This isn’t about me.”  The shadow wings flexed, caressing Dean’s still-sensitized skin.  Something in Dean stirred in renewed interest, and Castiel sent calm reassurance through the bond, soothing the halfhearted arousal into a mild ebb.  “You are mine, Dean Winchester:  mine to stand beside in war and peace.  Mine to pleasure and protect.  And when there is something you need, I will ensure that you have it.  Always.”

For a long moment, Dean floated, letting both the words and the emotion behind them sink into the core of his soul.  Slowly, he folded his arms until they were entwined with his mate’s, and he tucked a fraction tighter into the protected enclosure of Castiel’s body.  “What if it’s something I shouldn’t even want?  What if what I need is something I’m not supposed to have?  Or don’t deserve?”

A gentle kiss brushed beneath Dean’s ear.  “I will be the judge of what you deserve.  And right now, you deserve to rest.”

Before Dean could protest, he heard a sound like something electronic being activated.  A moment later, and Dean couldn’t help smiling incredulously.  “ ** _Smokey and the Bandit?_**  Not exactly a traditional choice for post-coital cuddling, Cas.”

“You have said it’s one of your favorites,” Castiel replied.  “And since you’re blindfolded, I thought you might enjoy listening to something that you could follow with your mind’s eye.”

“I can take it off,” Dean offered, lifting one hand to remove it.

Castiel caught his wrist before he could get there.  “No.”

The command implicit in the angel’s tone sent pleasant shivers down Dean’s spine.  “Not done with me yet, huh?”

Bringing Dean’s hand back down and tucking him closer yet, Castiel murmured in Dean’s ear:  “I will never be ‘done’ with you, beloved.  And yes:  my plans for you in this place are nowhere near fruition.”

His breath went shallow even as Castiel once again soothed the spike of his arousal into something softer, his entire being responding to the dominance underpinning the words.  “Good to know.”


	4. Chapter 4

Finding an abandoned farmhouse about an hour’s drive from Bobby’s and getting it warded was easy enough, and it gave Sam something to occupy his energy.  It nagged at him that Crowley had been so insistent he be left behind; there was something about it that he wasn’t finding the shape of, and Sam had learned the hard way that demons couldn’t be trusted even if it seemed like they were telling the entire truth…

The normal guilt spiral couldn’t take hold, though.  This time, there was a warm upwelling of calm, of peace and forgiveness, that seemed to flow up from the soles of his feet and envelop him, keeping it at bay.  A hand touched his shoulder and Sam turned to find Abariel had crossed the room to stand beside him, an expression of soft compassion on his pale features.  “Abbi?”

“You shouldn’t punish yourself,” Abbi told him gently.  “None of this is your fault, Sam, any more than it’s your brother’s.”

Sighing heavily, Sam put down the spray-paint can he’d been using and sat heavily on the floor.  “I’ve played right into their hands, Abbi.  Too many times to count.”

Sitting down beside him, Abariel took Sam’s right hand in both of his own, rubbing his thumbs over the top of Sam’s wrist.  Sam could feel the honeyed warmth of Abariel’s soothing grace spreading up into him from the light touch, pushing back the shadows that seemed to perpetually hover in Sam’s mind.  “Not even angels are perfect, Sam.  We can be deceived; we can deceive ourselves.  Certainly Gabriel did in thinking he could hide away from all this.”

“But that’s not the reason that Bobby’s in the line of fire right now,” Sam countered.  “That’s not why if Dean would be the one Crowley would’ve taken if he’d been here instead of wherever he is with Cas.  Crowley couldn’t take you guys because you’re angels.  But me…”

“If you don’t like something about yourself, change it,” Abariel replied simply.  “Not as easy as it sounds even for creatures with free will, but it’s the only option you have.  The alternative is hating yourself for the rest of your life, and I don’t think that’s particularly healthy, d’you?”

Sam chuckled, looking at the angel somewhat ruefully.  He’d been surprised by the wholeheartedness with which both Abariel and Gamaliel had accepted him as Gabriel’s mate, the sincerity to their vows of fealty and their lack of any condemnation or suspicion.  It seemed far too good to be true, considering the way every other angel they’d met had reacted to him.  But try as he might, he couldn’t find a flaw in it:  not a sidelong glance that Gabriel didn’t see, not a wry remark that cut just a little too close.  “You think I’ll get the chance?” he asked, trying for gallows humor.

Abariel gave a graceful shrug.  “Anything’s possible, Sam.  What harm is there in planning for the future that we’re all working so hard to ensure?”

Sam tried to smile at that.  Tried to be reassured that he would have a part in the future they were trying to give the entire world.  But something passed through him at the words:  not a shadow, not foreboding.  Just something that shook Sam to the core, leaving him half-breathless and cold.

Gabriel was by his side in a heartbeat, golden eyes fixed on Sam with a strange intensity.  “Sam?”

“I don’t know.”  For a moment, all Sam could see was the middle distance.  He heard the question Gabriel didn’t need to voice, caught in the strange limbo that had sometimes come right before a vision.  He hadn’t had visions in years, not since Dean had put one of the Colt’s bullets between Azazel’s eyes.  “It’s like someone just walked across my grave.”  He looked at Gabriel, forced himself to focus.  “I can’t see it, Gabe… why can’t I see it?”

“Because it’s your future,” the archangel explained gently.  “You’re too close to see clearly.”

“I’ve seen things close to me before,” Sam protested helplessly.  “Jessica… Dean…”

“But not your own path.”  Gabriel was being careful to not touch him, was letting Abariel keep up the physical contact until the fugue fully passed.  “It’s normal, Sam.  It takes time and practice to be able to see around yourself; it took me ages to figure it out.”  He paused, giving in to a moment of hesitation.  “Luci never did get the knack of it.”

Sam could feel his eyes going wide at the revelation.  “What…?”

“Not all angels have the gift,” Gabriel elaborated.  “But Heylel had it in spades.  I learned how to use my own talent for it from him… learned most of my tricks from him, actually.”

The ghosts of the past were so close; Sam couldn’t help reaching up, his fingertips grazing the arch of Gabriel’s cheekbone…

_*“Sam!”_

_Looking up.  Seeing Brady waving him over to a table.  Relief that, for the moment, Brady looked sober and clear-headed.  Something had happened over the break that had set his friend spiraling out of control, and Sam was doing everything he could to pull him back out of freefall._

_“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Brady was saying to a young woman as Sam sat down.  “If there’s anybody on campus that’s more serious boyfriend material than this guy, I haven’t met him yet.”_

_Heart-shaped face.  Sweet, open, honest smile.  Blonde ringlets that shone in the sunlight.  A delicate hand reaching out to take his own.  “Call me Jess.”*_

The vision-memory cleared almost as fast as it had come on, leaving Sam gasping in the grip of the two angels beside him.  Gabriel was in his lap, cradling his face; Abariel had moved to sit next to him against the wall, one arm around his shoulders and another on his chest over his heart.  “Gabriel…?”

“I gotcha, Sammy.”

Sam could feel the power radiating through him from both of them, easing the migraine.  Keeping the nosebleed at bay.  “It wasn’t the future,” he croaked, trying to make sense of the world again.  “It was a memory… sophomore year…”

“I saw, gorgeous.”  One hand reached up, stroking through Sam’s hair.  “It’s okay.”

“Why would I be seeing that _now_?”  Sam could feel his body settling, wanted to give into the urge to wrap around Gabriel and hide for a few hours.  They didn’t have time; he knew Bobby and Crowley would be back soon with their target; but everything in him wanted to run.  “It was a vision, but it wasn’t, and I know Azazel killed Jessica but he’s been dead for years; I watched Dean kill him myself…”

“It’s going to be fine, Sam.”  Gabriel shifted, wrapping his legs around Sam’s waist and letting Sam bury his face in Gabriel’s shoulder.  Those long arms wrapped around his torso as Gabriel slid one arm around Sam’s neck and laced the other hand into Sam’s hair.  He knew now; he knew what Sam couldn’t see.  Wished he could spare his lover what was about to happen.

But Sam deserved the truth, as painful as it was going to be for a long time to come.

Dean wasn’t used to being taken care of.

He vaguely remembered his mother caring for him in his toddler years:  the smell of Ivory soap on her skin when she hugged him.  The gentleness of her hands as she’d soothed his fevers.  Even when she’d been heavily pregnant with Sam, she had curled up with him when it had been time for his nap, kissing his forehead and letting him fall asleep to the sound of Sam inside her belly and the quiet hum of Hey, Jude in her throat.

After the fire, though, it had been different.  Sam had been just an infant, and his father had still had to work.  Dean had been in kindergarten, and the other mothers that had offered to help John out in the aftermath of the fire had had their own way of doing things.  Smarter even then than anyone had understood, it hadn’t been long before Dean had started figuring out how to replicate things his mother had done so that he could do them for Sammy, because how else would Sammy know what it had been like?

And then they’d been on the road, and Dean had had to learn a whole new set of survival skills.  How to make the money their father had left them last as long as possible.  How to keep adults from guessing that they’d been on their own in the motel while John had been out hunting.  How to steal what they’d needed when what John had left behind couldn’t be stretched any further, or when John had been gone longer than expected.

How to not be seen as he’d followed homeless people and prostitutes, street kids and hustlers, learning how those with no one else to depend on survived.  His father had never really needed to have the sex talk with Dean at thirteen; by then, Dean had seen much more than John would ever have seen fit to tell him about.  Had even started to put the skills to use, having practiced not gagging by using the empty beer bottles that had been omnipresent in the footwells of the Impala.

If Sam had ever suspected, he’d never brought the subject up.  Never asked, even with their newfound closeness and the Apocalypse bearing down on them, if the way Dean had sometimes limped when he’d come back from a supply run had really meant he’d taken a fall, as Dean had always told him it did.  If the way Dean used to scrub his teeth so hard they’d bled and gargled with the peroxide from their first aid kit had really been just because they couldn’t afford to go to the dentist.

He hadn’t thought about any of it in years.  After all, he’d only done any of it because there hadn’t been any other option, and Sam had always come first.  Dean hadn’t come first since the night his mother had died, and if he’d resented that as a child, he’d learned to put that resentment aside just like all of the other childish things that had no place in a life lived in shadows and motel rooms.

So when Castiel cradled him protectively close, spooned around Dean’s body and shadow-wings blanketing him in grace, it surprised Dean how easy it was to relax into the posture.  How natural it felt to let Castiel’s fingers wander in caresses meant to soothe and reassure rather than arouse.  He hadn’t realized how much tension he’d carried in his body until it started to slip away in his mate’s embrace, leaving him floating in his own skin.

Dimly, Dean heard the growl of his own stomach and chuckled ruefully at it.  He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten, but he’d been so distracted since they’d gotten here that he hadn’t even realized he was hungry until just now.  Castiel nuzzled beneath his ear at the sound.  “I think I’d better feed you.”

“Sounds like an idea.”  Almost reluctantly, Dean started to sit up, to reach for his blindfold.

Once again, Castiel caught his hand.  “Leave it.”

“Just how am I supposed to eat if I can’t see, Cas?” Dean challenged.  “I’m all for exploring kinks, but-”

“I will feed you.”

For a moment, Dean could only sit there, legs folded Indian-style and his mouth hanging open as the rest of his protest died in his throat.  The arousal Castiel had been keeping banked during the movie flared bright in his veins, and his mouth slowly closed as he processed the image Castiel’s words had painted in his mind.  “Oh… kay.”

“Unless you object to that idea?” Castiel asked mildly.

Dean could feel the rush of grace across the back of the bond; Castiel’s and whatever magic Gabriel had left here working together.  “No,” he replied, though even the simple syllable felt unsteady.  “No, I… that’ll work.”

A quiet chuckle, and then Dean caught the scent of warm blueberry pie just under his nose.  “Good.”

It wasn’t like in porn, where the actors could rehearse and they could edit out the mishaps.  It took several tries for Castiel to not clack the fork against Dean’s teeth as Dean tried to wrap his lips around each bite of the pie.  The warm, sticky filling ended up smeared across his mouth and chin like a child’s first attempt to apply their mother’s lipstick:  the results of Castiel trying to signal Dean that another forkful was available to him without asking him to ‘open up’ like one would a toddler.  But they found their ease eventually:  Castiel letting Dean see through their bond as if through Castiel’s eyes, and by the time Dean’s appetite for food was sated, they were both hungry for something else entirely.

When Castiel tumbled him onto his back, Dean wrapped his arms around Castiel’s shoulders and yielded, moaning as the angel’s kisses suckled the blueberry stains from his face and left lovebites that would be just as purple on his neck, his collarbone, down along the edge of his tattoo.

“Dean…”  It was a growl that sent sparks straight to Dean’s groin as the angel found his nipple and pinched it between sharp teeth, then lapped at the nub with his tongue to soothe it.  “Beloved…”

“Gotta have you this time,” Dean panted.  His legs had been spread from the moment Castiel had pushed him down, his thighs squeezing at his mate’s flanks even as his hips lifted in invitation.  “Please, Cas…”

“All in good time,” Castiel murmured back, the words tracing across Dean’s skin as the angel shifted his attentions to the opposite nipple, this time laving it until it was so sensitive that Dean whined with every pass of his tongue, shouting when Castiel’s teeth slowly sank in.

It seemed to go on forever:  unable to see, unable to convince the angel to hurry no matter how he pleaded, Dean could only thread his right hand into the soft waves of Castiel’s hair as that mouth traveled in slow, deliberate paths down the planes of his chest, the not-quite soft swell of his stomach.  He bucked and shouted and keened as Castiel worried a series of stinging bites around the edge of his navel, left hand fisting in the sheets until his knuckles were white.

The first kiss brushed across the leaking crown of his erection had Dean’s every breath ending on a whine, high and desperate for relief.  “Cas…”

A long, slow drag of Castiel’s tongue along the thick vein was his only response.  His head followed the motion as Dean’s hips shoved towards him, his mouth opening to swallow Dean to the root in one motion as Dean’s hips rolled back down.

The suddenness of being engulfed in tight, wet heat drove a long, wanton moan from Dean’s lips.  His fingers tightened in Castiel’s hair even as the angel’s throat and tongue milked at him, though whether he wanted to pull Castiel away or hold him still so that he could thrust up into the cavern of that sinfully hot mouth he couldn’t have said.

Careful fingers, slick and gentle, found their way between his legs, skimming along the tender skin of his perineum and brushing along the heavy sac that was drawing tighter against his body with every flex of Castiel’s throat.  Dean wanted to urge him on, to beg him to leave off and get inside him already; he couldn’t find the words for either.  The single-minded focus his mate could bring to everything he did was centered on bringing Dean to orgasm, and Dean was having trouble even wanting to dissuade him.

Especially when those oil-slick fingers trailed further back, brushing over his entrance.  Another whine left him as Dean spread his legs wider, canting his hips up against the mouth still working his length to give the angel better access.

But those fingers didn’t enter him.  Didn’t even try to push in.  They toyed with him instead, rubbing along the pulsing rim with deft strokes until Dean’s hips didn’t know which way they wanted to move.  He was suspended between not enough pressure, not enough grip, lost in sensation that kept him on the knife’s edge for what felt like hours…

The swift plunge of two fingers sinking to the knuckles into his body sent Dean screaming over the edge, his release pouring down his mate’s still-flexing throat as Dean fell apart beneath his touch.

By the time Dean came back to himself, any residual mess had been cleaned away.  He was once again curled into Castiel’s arms, his thoughts muzzy and his body floating on a cloud of post-coital endorphins.

“I love you,” he told Castiel simply.  He didn’t even want to say more.  Didn’t want to ask why Castiel wasn’t taking his pleading invitations to penetrate him.  He wanted to stay here, where it was safe and warm.  Where Castiel took care of everything, and Dean could rest for a while.

“And I you, beloved,” Castiel replied, brushing another reassuring kiss to his shoulder.  “Always.”

By the time Sam had recovered from his vision-memory, there was just barely enough time to complete the devil’s trap in what would serve as the interrogation room.  The paint wasn’t even completely dry as Aziraphale and Crowley entered, escorting the demon that Crowley and Bobby had taken prisoner between them.  Their captive was hooded under a burlap bag with a devil’s trap painted on it, and Sam could see the fresh blood that had seeped into the fabric from whatever wounds the demon had sustained during the struggle to capture him.  Saw the gaping wounds from where another sigil Sam hadn’t seen before had been carved into the demon’s chest.  “That’s him?” he asked as Bobby and Gamaliel appeared in the room.

“Yeah, that’s him.”  The elder hunter sounded angrier than Sam had ever heard him before, save when he’d had to kill his reanimated wife a second time.  “Found out why we’ve been seeing flash outbreaks of swine flu, too.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed.  “What do you mean?”

“Sons of bitches are planning to distribute vials of Croatoan disguised as a vaccine,” Bobby spat.  “Pestilence is creating a panic, and people are going to line up like cattle for the slaughterhouse.”

“When Dean and Castiel get back, I’m taking Castiel and Abariel on a run to the distribution centers,” Gamaliel told him.  There was a coldness in the warrior-angel’s voice that Sam had never heard before.  “They will not succeed.”

“Good.”  Sam almost wanted to ask to go along, being immune from Croatoan like the angels were.  But the angels could get it done faster, especially working as a team, and there was only so much time left for everything that needed to happen.  Before he could even begin to ask about strategy, though, Gabriel emerged from the room where the others were securing the demon for interrogation.  His golden eyes were a muted blaze of anger, and there was something incandescent on his side of the bond that drew Sam’s attention immediately.  “Gabriel?  What’s wrong?”

“He’s just discovered the reason why I wanted you left out of this little escapade,” Crowley commented from behind him.  “Now, for the record:  I’m against this.  Negotiating a high-level defection is a delicate business.  But your archangel seems to think that you’re going to be an asset instead of a liability, and no one knows better than I do about the stubbornness of seraphim.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat reproachfully.  Crowley’s only response was a knowing, dirty-eyed smirk.  Sam turned his attention to Gabriel, ignoring them.  “What’s he talking about?”

“It’s better if I show you,” Gabriel offered.  There was a muted quality to his voice that Sam couldn’t quite pinpoint, though the blaze in his grace hadn’t dimmed.  “Abbi, you come too.”

“Fine,” Crowley groused as they turned to walk into the room.  “Go ahead:  ruin our last, best hope.  It’s only the end of the world.”

Part of Sam wanted to stop.  To demand an explanation of Crowley’s cryptic statements, the bright burn in Gabriel’s grace, the tension that had flooded the air in the house from the moment they’d returned with the demon in tow.  But the answers were tied to the demon they’d brought back, and so Sam followed them in.

The demon was still hooded, bound across the chest to a chair in the center of the devil’s trap.  His arms were pulled behind the back of the chair, no doubt secured at the wrist as well.  He was starting to come around beneath the burlap, a groan of pain muffled by the rough fabric.

“The sigil in his chest keeps him locked inside the body,” Gabriel explained.  “He can’t smoke out or disappear on us even if we take him out of the devil’s trap, which means that he’s stuck here for as long as it takes us to get what we need.”

“Interesting trick,” Sam complimented, still confused.  “Gabriel, what’s this all about?”

Before Gabriel could open his mouth to answer, a voice called out his name from beneath the hood.  A voice he hadn’t heard outside of his memories since he’d left Stanford in the wake of Jessica’s death.  Unable to stop himself, Sam closed the distance between them and tore the bag away from the demon’s head.

Blonde hair, bloodied from a head injury.  Sharp nose.  Blue eyes set in a face so familiar that it felt like someone had run Sam through.  Again.  “Brady?!”

A cocky smile.  He’d seen it a thousand times before.  “Brady hasn’t been Brady in years.  Since the middle of… sophomore year, actually.”

_*“Call me Jess.”*_ was the last thought that went through Sam’s mind before the world dissolved into a red mist around him.


	5. Chapter 5

_He didn’t remember being pulled from the room._

_Didn’t remember the sound of Brady’s voice following him out, mocking him._

_Didn’t even remember the sound of the blow that someone delivered across Brady’s face, silencing him._

_All Sam knew was the sound of Jessica’s screams as she’d burned.  The way her blood had felt as it had dripped onto his face from where she’d been suspended above their bed.  The heat of the flames and the cloying stench of roasting flesh._

_Azazel’s death had been quick:  too quick to truly pay him back for the lives he’d ruined.  But in the end, it had had to be enough that they’d won.  That he’d been ended before he could do any more harm than he’d already wrought._

_This demon’s death wouldn’t be nearly so merciful.  Sam was going to flense the bastard with Ruby’s knife; flay him alive until his screams finally drowned out those of the woman whose only crime had been loving the True Vessel of the Devil._

“That’s enough, Sam.”

_The voice sounded incredibly far away at first.  Like someone talking to him from the other side of a wall, or maybe from outside the house._

“You have to stop now, Sam.  We need you.”

_It was closer now.  Each word was like a shaft of sunlight cutting through the red fog around his mind.  Sam didn’t want to come out of it.  Didn’t want to emerge until the demon was made to pay for his betrayal.  For putting an innocent woman in the middle of a supernatural war._

_For finally proving that Sam had never been “out”.  That the idea he’d ever truly been free of the life in which he’d been raised was nothing but a beautiful lie that he’d told himself so often, it sounded like truth._

“ **Sam.** ”

_More sunlight.  Pouring in through the spaces the other rafts had made, widening the holes and dispersing the mist that tried to keep hovering over his mind.  Sam found himself shaking his head, unable to stop the inexorable flow of clarity and calm that found every chink and crack in his rage and flooded in, finally sweeping it away._

When his vision normalized again, Abariel was in front of him.  Both of the angel’s slender hands were braced against his chest, immovable objects in the path of what had felt like an unstoppable force inside him.  Those periwinkle eyes were brighter than he’d ever seen them, the afterimage of the angel’s grace not quite faded from their depths.

“Are you back with us now?” Abariel asked.  His voice was petal soft, but there was an obdurate undertone that Sam had never heard before.  An echo of the Virtue’s true voice.

“Yeah.”  Sam felt wrung out, exhausted.  He staggered back away from the touch of Abariel’s hands, sinking onto a chair that coughed up a cloud of dust at the contact.  “I…”

“You don’t have to explain,” Abariel told him gently.  “All things considered, I’m surprised it didn’t take more to bring you back down.”

There was a careful step across the room.  Sam looked up to see Gabriel starting from the corner by the door, crossing to him with an expression on his face that was so compassionate that it hurt Sam to look at it.

He didn’t want to cry.  Not yet.  He wanted to be angry.  He wanted to work the mission and get the intel they needed.  He wanted to beat Heaven and Hell at their own game and stop the Apocalypse.

He didn’t want Jessica’s death to have been in vain.

However much Gabriel could sense across the bond, it didn’t stop him from coming to Sam’s side.  It didn’t stop him from slipping his left hand into Sam’s right, or from running a gentle right hand through Sam’s hair.  “I’m sorry, gorgeous.  Ordinarily, I’d let you slit him from navel to nose and watch with a song in my heart.  But we can’t gut him like a fish until we get Pestilence’s location out of him.”

Sam took a long, shaky breath.  Closed his eyes against the tide of emotion threatening to overwhelm him.  Let it back out, slow and deliberate, and then opened his eyes as his game face slid into place.  “I can get it out of him.  He wants to brag about what he did to me back at Stanford; thinks he can get me to make a mistake, or at least kill him before someone realizes that we took him and why.  I can use it against him.”

Gabriel and Abariel exchanged a look.  “And how do you propose to keep a lid on your entirely-justified urge to split him up the middle?  Abbi might’ve calmed you down, but that demon’s going to keep poking you in tender spots until he finds one that’ll set you off again.”

“I have to do this,” Sam insisted.

There was a stubborn set to his jaw that Gabriel recognized with an inward groan.  There would be no talking Sam around this; no letting someone else go into that room in his place.  And, if Gabriel was honest with himself, Sam had every right to be the one peeling the answers out of the demon’s hide.

There was only one solution.  “Okay… but first, you have to give it to me, Sam.”  Sam blinked, then drew the demon-killing blade from its sheath.  Gabriel waved him off.  “No, not that.  You might need it.”

“Then what?” Sam asked as he re-sheathed the knife, confused.

Holding Sam’s eyes, Gabriel reached up through the bond and nudged, ever so gently, at the knot of rage and betrayal that had tied itself around Sam’s heart.  With a soft gasp, Sam felt it loosen, felt the roiling darkness of it draining away like poison from an infected wound.  It flowed down the bond and into Gabriel, whose eyes went wide and blind for a moment as it washed through the archangel.

All at once, Sam understood.  “ _ **No.**_  I won’t do that to you.”

“I can take it,” Gabriel assured him.  “He’s banking on provoking you, gorgeous, just like Lilith did.  They know they can.  So let me take the bullets out of their gun for you.”

“So you can be the one angry enough to kill him?” Sam retorted hotly.  “Considering you’re about a thousand times more powerful than I am?”

“Abbi can keep me out of it.”  Gabriel’s expression was steady, resolute.  “Mal will be standing guard in there with you, too, but you’ve just experienced what Abbi can do.  I’ll be fine, and you’ll be able to get what we need.”

It took what felt like forever for Sam to wrap his mind around it.  To gather half a dozen other strategies, only to discard them again.  There was a moment, quiet and terrible, when the prospect of not feeling anything as he stood before the demon wearing one of his best friends was dreadfully appealing.

To be allowed, if only for a short time, to let someone else handle the guilt and the grief and the doubt and the pain for him.  To just get the job done, and not worry about what kind of man he was becoming while he did it.

It came on so slowly that Gabriel almost missed the moment it started:  a trickle, widening to a rivulet.  Broader, deeper, rushing into him.  Steadier and stronger until it was a torrent, a great crashing wave, faster than he could’ve imagined.  A riptide, undertow dragging him beneath the surface, pouring into and over and through him until he was drowning in it…

And then a dim, ponderous crash:  the dam closing, stopping the waters from rushing back to where they belonged.  Penning them in the valley of his grace and leaving him adrift.

“Take care of him.”  Sam’s voice was detached, cool, unconcerned.  Before it even connected in the maelstrom of Gabriel’s mind that the words had been spoken, his mate was gone, leaving him adrift in an ocean deep enough to crush him.

They were on the patio, lying on the sun-warmed stones and luxuriating in the afterglow.  By now, Castiel had brought Dean to orgasm in nearly every room in the house, using his hands and lips and tongue and voice and even the caress of his wings.

After the fourth climax, Dean had stopped asking Castiel to penetrate him.  Had just surrendered himself to whatever Castiel wanted to do with him.  Had trusted that Castiel wouldn’t push past his boundaries in the name of giving him what he needed.

How much time had passed, Dean couldn’t be sure.  If it hadn’t had any meaning when he’d been able to see the daylight streaming through the glass walls, it had truly lost any semblance of it while Dean was under the blindfold.  All he knew; all he needed to know; was Castiel.  The sound of the angel’s voice.  The pleasure the angel lavished on him for what had to be hours on end.  The way Dean yearned into his mate’s every touch.  The way everything seemed very far away.

Objectively, he knew they couldn’t stay here forever.  This was a temporary respite so that he could get his head back on straight; nothing more.  But the longer it seemed that they stayed, the more Dean wanted to insist that the world could go to Hell or not as it chose.  He and Castiel would just bring Sam and Gabriel and Abariel and Gamaliel and anyone else they wanted to protect, and they could all stay right here where it was safe.  Where the war between Michael and Lucifer couldn’t touch them.

The thought itself was the fantasy’s undoing.  There were too many people that they would want to keep out of harm’s way.  And what was this place, in the end, but an illusion of a refuge created by Gabriel’s magic?  Without the world to anchor it to, Dean knew it would only be a matter of time before Gabriel couldn’t sustain this little haven any longer.  And then everyone they’d tried to save would be thrust right back into the mess.  A mess they had a chance to prevent from ever happening.

Castiel felt the change in Dean; felt the tactician in his mate slot back into place and come at the problem logically, rather than from a place of reaction and fear.  Leaning up, he brushed a kiss over the crown of Dean’s head.  “Welcome back.”

Dean grumbled something inaudible, shifting to nestle his head into the hollow of Castiel’s left shoulder.  “Not back yet.  Comfy.”

“That’s not what I meant.”  Castiel kissed the top of Dean’s head again, running a lazy hand down the length of his lover’s spine.  “And you know it.”

A deep sigh ghosted across Castiel’s skin.  “Yeah, I do.”  Regardless of the fact that he was still blindfolded, Dean propped himself up as if he was looking down at his mate’s face.  “I can’t believe you actually decided it would be a good idea to fuck me down off the ledge,” he groused.

“Gabriel suggested it some time ago,” Castiel explained helpfully.  “I simply came to the conclusion that it was the most expedient option to solve the problem.”

“Yeah:  I’d expect this kinda thing from the Trickster.”  Dean grinned impishly at his angel, even though he couldn’t see the seraph’s face.  “You picking up bad habits from him, too?”

“Actually, I’ve observed several similarities between you and Gabriel in the past few weeks,” Castiel replied with casual aplomb.  “And besides, don’t humans have a saying about ‘the quiet ones’?”

“You figure that applies, huh?” Dean teased.

“I can be quite stealthy.”

The deadpan humor set Dean laughing so hard that he rolled off Castiel and onto his back on the patio stones.  Castiel followed, his weight coming down against Dean’s hips even as Dean’s laughter rang out into the open sky, freer than it had felt in a very long time.  Enchanted by the sight even with Dean’s eyes covered, Castiel let him laugh until he couldn’t anymore, Dean sensing the fond smile and loving affection that radiated through their bond as his gaiety subsided into soft chortles.

When Castiel reached up, running a hand through Dean’s hair, Dean pressed into the touch, deepening the contact.  “We have to go back, don’t we?”

“Yes.”  The confirmation was as gentle as the angel could make it as he stroked the side of Dean’s face.  “Gabriel and I agreed that we could take up to twenty-four hours, but we should go back now that you’re feeling more settled.”

This time, it was Castiel that made to remove the blindfold, and Dean was the one to stop him.  “You really think Crowley’s come through for us?”

“I think if he hadn’t, Gabriel would’ve summoned us out of this place long before now,” Castiel replied reasonably.  “And I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you about all this.”

For a long moment, Dean was quiet beneath him.  It was still safe behind the blindfold.  Once it came off, the safety would go with it.  But above him, Castiel was waiting:  infinitely patient; silently expectant.  “Can we go back to the bedroom?” Dean asked, suddenly feeling exposed.

“Of course.”

With less than a thought, they were back inside, sinking into the plush softness of the cushion.  Dean instinctively rolled them to their sides, tangling into Castiel’s embrace.

It was safe here.  He could say it.

“We’ve got no leverage, Cas,” he admitted slowly.  “I’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it until my head’s tied up in a pretzel.  I can’t find a way to stop it.  We’ve got nothing they want more than they want to kill each other.  We’ve got no weapons that are powerful enough to even scare them.  Hell, Gabe’s an archangel just like they are, and when he tried to take on Lucifer, he got his ass killed.”  Dean’s voice fell on the words, his guilt over that particular expedition still fresh.  “It’s just starting to feel like no matter what we do, there’s no way to keep it from happening.  Like he was right all along.”

“Like who was right all along?” Castiel asked, frown evident in his voice.

“Lucifer.”  Dean shook a little at the memory.  “He told me that no matter what I did, no matter how much or how little I changed, it was always going to come down to Armageddon, and that he was going to win.  When we first got mated… you and me and Sammy to Gabe, I thought… maybe he really was wrong.  Maybe we really can stop this thing from happening.  But now Michael’s got Adam and Lucifer’s still wearing that poor dead bastard even though he’s holding the guy’s body together with spit and baling wire, and I can’t help thinking that he was right.  That there’s nothing we can do to keep them from going for each other’s throats and burning the world down while they’re at it.”

For a long moment, Castiel debated within himself.  But Dean was thinking now.  It was time to tell him.  “Gabriel came to the same conclusion last night,” he confessed softly.

Dean startled, sitting up.  He didn’t remove the blindfold, but it was a close thing in his dismay.  “What?!”

“He agrees with your assessment that Michael and Lucifer are too far gone to be reasoned with,” Castiel continued, tangling a hand into Dean’s to keep in physical contact with him even as he tried to soothe Dean’s upset through the bond.  “But the rings of the Four Horsemen, when brought together in one place, act like a skeleton key to the Cage Lucifer was trapped in for millennia.  Gabriel believes that, if we can obtain Pestilence’s and Death’s as well, we can find a way to trap both Michael and Lucifer there.  It will contain their graces and the conflict between them, rather than allowing things to come to a head on Earth.”

Slowly relaxing back as the idea sank in, Dean felt some of the panic of recent days recede.  “What about Adam?” he asked, sounding more cautious than pessimistic.  “What happens to him when we dump Michael into the box?”

“The Cage was designed to house angels, not humans.  Gabriel has theorized that it will reject Adam’s soul, allowing him to stay behind in his body while Michael is cast out.”

“Theorized?” Dean echoed.  “You mean he’s not sure?”

“None of us are sure of anything at this point, beloved,” Castiel pointed out reasonably.  “Except that this may be our best chance.  If Adam is somehow trapped in the Cage with Michael and Lucifer, then we will have to find a way to rescue him without releasing the other occupants in the process.”  When Dean’s lips pressed into a tight line, Castiel reached up and ran his thumb over the seam of them.  “There is nothing that we can try that will be without risk, Dean.  No plan that guarantees we will even all survive what we are about to face.  But whatever comes, I will make my stand with you, side by side, to the end.”

A shadow seemed to pass through Dean at the promise.  Unthinking, he reached for Castiel and drew him down, winding his limbs around his mate and capturing the angel’s lips with his own.

There was no artistry between them this time.  Only hunger edged with desperation, fear that this would be the last time they would be allowed to come together this way.  This time, when Dean’s legs parted and his hips ground against Castiel’s, Castiel gave in to the invitation, lifting Dean’s powerful thighs to wrap around his waist and guiding himself into Dean’s beckoning heat.

Having been fingered and rimmed for most of the day, the thick snub of pressure as Castiel pushed in felt like pure relief.  Dean’s head lolled back into the pillows with a moan as Castiel bottomed out in one long glide, his eyes rolling up into his head and his fingers digging hard into the muscles of Castiel’s back.  “So good, Cas…”

“Beloved…”  It was a sigh against his skin, the sound of Castiel’s own relief at finally being sheathed inside Dean’s body.  His mouth found Dean’s as they rested there, lingering in the heady feel of one another, trading kisses until neither of them could stand it any longer.

They built a rhythm together, shallow at first, little more than rocking against one another.  Slowly gathering speed and power until Castiel pulled one of Dean’s knees up over his shoulder and leaned in, pistoning hard and deep while Dean clawed at his back, gasping cries punched out of his throat whenever Castiel thrust against that bundle of nerves that he’d been stimulating all day…

There was no way Dean could hold back.  No sooner was he erupting between them than Castiel was pulling out, manhandling Dean onto his hands and knees before lining up and thrusting home.  Obscenities fell from Dean’s lips even as he dropped to his elbows and spread his knees wider, giving Castiel the leverage he needed to pound into Dean with the abandon Dean had been waiting for.  With a long, low moan, Dean offered himself up to his angel without reservation, needing to feel the angel’s strength, to know that he would feel it for days afterward.

To feel the hot rush of Castiel’s orgasm inside him as the angel groaned his name and left finger-shaped bruises on his hips that would last for weeks:  proof that the angel needed Dean just as much as Dean needed him.

They collapsed together, sated and slick, Dean curling up into the warm shell of Castiel’s embrace as the angel’s grace cleaned the sticky mess away.  “Just a little while longer,” Dean pleaded, his voice weary and passion-rough.  “I know we need to go back… but we can stay just a little while longer, can’t we?”

Nodding against the back of Dean’s head, Castiel felt his own fatigue tugging at him to rest.  “Just for a little while, Dean.  But then it’s time to go home.”

Murmuring his agreement, Dean let himself drift back into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Gamaliel was standing guard outside the interrogation room.  Sam paused when the angel didn’t immediately step aside to let him by.  “It’s better if I do this alone,” he instructed coolly.  “Keep the others off my back.”

“You’re certain you want to go in there on your own?” Gamaliel asked, his green eyes narrow as he assessed the change in the hunter.

“I go in there with an angel and he’s going to figure you’re only there to keep me from killing him.”  Sam squared his shoulders.  “I’ve got this.  Just keep the others out of my way.”

Something about Sam’s demeanor made Mal uneasy.  Still, they had a job to do, and Sam outranked him.  “I’ll be right here,” he said, moving out of Sam’s way.

Nodding, Sam walked into the interrogation room without a backwards glance.

Inside his own mind, Gabriel was screaming.

There was no sound; his throat wouldn’t open to give them voice.  There was only the sound in his mind, shrill and unceasing, and the vague sense of Abariel behind it, trying to make it easier to bear...

_It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair and Dad did the best he could didn’t know how big the threat was or where it was really coming from didn’t know the shape of it, didn’t know how to handle it, couldn’t handle it, was lost in his own trauma and grief and despair but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t fair and there was no one else to blame_

_No one else to blame for the way Dean came back to the motel so many times with a blind expression and a limp, a touchy temper and lips swollen in a way that didn’t come from being punched.  No one else to blame for the way Dean’s legs bowed from malnutrition and mine didn’t_

_It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t John’s fault but it was John’s fault because he got lost in the hunts he lost himself and he lost his grief and he found an outlet for his rage and his paranoia he found a mission when we lost our mother and there was no one and everyone else to blame because if John had just stayed on mission he could’ve found Yellow Eyes instead of going after black dogs and vampires and skinchangers he could’ve found Yellow Eyes and killed him decades ago and then Dean wouldn’t have gone to Hell and I could’ve married Jessica and everything would’ve gone back to normal_

_Except nothing was normal nothing could ever be normal because I couldn’t even explain my own past or why I hoarded salt and silver and iron or why I can wield any blade put in my hands and I’m a crack shot with a gun and why sometimes if someone came up on me wrong at school they wound up in a heap on the ground_

_In the ground.  Mom’s in the ground and it was years decades before we knew how wrong that was wrong that she was just buried in a box in a dress with flowers when she should’ve been wrapped in linen with herbs and amulets and burned until there was nothing left because that’s the only way she’d be safe the only way her spirit could be truly at rest and her body couldn’t be used or brought back or defiled the way she should’ve been put to rest because she’d been a hunter except we didn’t know never knew and we can’t go back and dig up our own mother like just another salt and burn_

_Our mother who lied.  Our mother who died with too many secrets and not enough sense.  Our mother who never told anyone about her past our past our legacy not even the deal she made with the devil’s right hand that started all this_

_Except she didn’t start it none of us started it it had started ages before any of us were even possible but we didn’t know couldn’t know should’ve known should’ve been warned why didn’t Gabriel warn us in Springfield why didn’t he tell me in Florida why did he have to give Dean back to me why couldn’t he have just told me the truth I wouldn’t have believed him he could’ve made me believe him he made me love him_

_I love him I love him I don’t even know when I started to except I do as much more than I ever did Jessica I wanted to marry her she would’ve given me beautiful children loving home a normal flawed amazing life but I can’t have any of that I’m a hunter killer Vessel vagabond I have nothing to offer her him anyone but I love him and he died for me and I have to let him go it’s the only way_

_The only way I opened the door I have to close it again I’m what he wants I’m the only weapon we have he won’t expect won’t see me coming I can do this and then it’ll be over over finally over and Mom Jess Dad Jim Andy Lily Max Ellen Jo Dean Gabriel I won’t have died in vain it’ll be okay it’ll be all right he’ll never forgive me why can’t I just have one good thing one thing that’s mine that’s mine forever that they can’t take away or tear apart it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s **not FAIR**_ …

Inside Gabriel’s mind, Sam was screaming, and nothing Abariel did could make it stop.

“We doing last words?  Or no?”

A disdainful laugh huffed in Sam’s throat as he strolled into the room, pulling another ancient chair around and sitting just beyond the demon’s reach.  “Sophomore year, huh?  Had to be… what?  That Thanksgiving break?”

“Yessir!  He was the perfect point of access,” the demon replied.  “I mean, Brady?  He was a good kid; your best friend, really.  It was almost touching:  how hard you tried to get me back on the straight and narrow after we came back all messed up.  Flushed my drugs, tried to convince me that going back into pre-med was more important than working my way through all those thirsty co-ed bitches.  Was a nice little vacation, too.  I hadn’t had that much fun in a while.”

Sam quirked an eyebrow, but held his tongue.

“But ol’ Yellow Eyes didn’t send me there for a vacation,” Brady continued.  “No:  he could tell we were losing you; that you were as deluded as that bitch mother of yours was about being able to walk away from it all.  And you were our favorite horse in the race to boot!  No way we were letting you turn into a worthless sack of piss lawyer.

“So I hooked you up with a pure, sweet, innocent piece of tail.”  The smile that curled across Brady’s lips was viciously bright, almost triumphant.  “And then I toasted her on the ceiling.”  Sam’s expression darkened, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring briefly.  Brady laughed.  “Oh, yeah!  Azazel might’ve ordered the hit on Jessica, but I’m the one that got to have all the fun!”

Sam didn’t move.  Just gazed back at the demon, his fingers tightening on the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned white.

“You know,” the demon continued bragging, “she thought we were friends, too.  Let me right in to wait for you; offered me some of the cookies she was baking for when you got back.  I knew I had to make my move then, with your big brother having showed back up for the first time since freshman year.  She was so surprised… so hurt when I started in on her… I almost blew my wad early, it was so good.  But you coming back to her having died in a fire wouldn’t have had nearly the same impact as you getting to see her up there… gutted and burning...”  He smiled again, mockingly sweet.  “Did it bring back memories of Mommy, Sam?  Or did Deanie-dearest have to tell you that part?”

Sam’s whole body was trembling; the wood creaking in his grip.  He saw the way Brady tracked the lines of his body, the way the demon wracked his brain for one more taunt to break his resolve…

Saw the dismay in those familiar blue eyes when Sam’s entire frame suddenly relaxed, his hazel eyes tilting up at the corners as he smiled indulgently.  “That’s your trump card?  Seriously?   _That’s_ the best you’ve got?  Because I’ve got to tell you, man:  your game’s pretty weak.  No wonder you couldn’t get promoted when Dean put a bullet between Azazel’s eyes.”

Brady’s entire face creased in confusion.  “What…?”

Leaning back, Sam crossed his long legs and steepled his fingers.  “I mean, maybe in demon circles going from a Fallen’s bootlicker to a Horseman’s stable boy _is_ a promotion… of sorts… but it’s really still just… kind’ve pathetic.”

Blue eyes raked over Sam again, the demon frantically reassessing his opponent.  “This isn’t the Sammy-boy I remember.”

“No, it’s not.”  Sam smiled faintly.  “And the beauty of it all is that, even back then, you had no idea who I really was.  Even Azazel didn’t get it right.  All those others you created?  All the other children whose parents you murdered and whose lives you turned upside down by granting them the powers of a Grigori?  Lucifer didn’t want or need any of them.”  He smiled.  “It was only me.  It could only ever have been me.  And he kept you all in the dark just as much as Michael lied to the angels.”

“We made you what you are!” Brady snarled.  “You’ve got the same thing in your veins that we do.”

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Sam replied.  His tone was mild, pleasant even, distracting from the dangerous glint in his eyes.  “Azazel was Fallen.  You, though?  You were human once.  Not even a witch.  Just a sad sack of a human that was willing to sell his soul for something that seemed important at the time.  How long did you last on the Rack, huh?  A year?  Five?”

“Your precious brother took Alastair’s offer, too,” Brady reminded him.  “You should’ve _seen_ the demon he was becoming.”

“Except that my brother was important,” Sam replied sweetly.  “Important enough to save.  To burn out the Dark before it could take him completely.  You?  You’ve never been important to anybody, have you?  You weren’t even good enough for Alastair to teach.”

“He taught me enough!”  Brady was straining against his bonds now, his temper fraying.  “You can ask your precious Jessica if you don’t believe me.”

“Not interested.”  Sam uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter.  “But I am interested in where your current boss is going next… and you’re going to tell me.”

Brady’s eyes widened, and he let out a wild laugh of disbelief.  “You really think I’m that stupid?  I’m dead either way, Sam; I’m going to go out on the winning side, if it’s all the same to you.  Which is more than I can say for that traitorous Fallen and your pet angels.”

“Really?”  Sam quirked an eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah.”  Another vicious smile.  “When Lucifer wins… and he will… your brother’s going back to the Pit where he belongs; right back to the Darkness until he’s as much demon as the rest of us.  And then he’ll take Alastair’s place, and Lucifer will use him to make your little winged harem here scream for a thousand centuries.  Crowley, too.  He’s never going to let them die, Sam, especially not the Herald.  No:  he’s going to keep you right where you belong, in a little Cage all your own right beside the basalt throne, and you’re going to spend eternity listening to your brother tearing them apart one feather at a time.”

Not even bothering to pretend to look angry, Sam shrugged.  “Maybe.”  He watched as Brady’s eyes widened even further, unable to believe that his words had no effect on Sam’s temper.  “But they’re not the only ones that won’t be allowed to die.”

It came on so gradually that the demon didn’t realize it was happening at first, so focused was he on trying to make Sam react predictably.  Building and building until there was no denying what it meant.  “No…”  He began to struggle, to panic, the chair rocking and shaking as he strained to get free and run from the grip of Sam’s mind.  “No, you can’t!  The sigil!”

“I know,” Sam agreed pleasantly.  His eyes were burning now, all of his will focused as Ruby had once taught him to do, augmented by the control he’d learned from Gabriel since their mating.  “I’m curious to see how long we can keep it up.”

A glow started under Brady’s skin.  Not bright enough to be grace light, but sustaining for far longer than the flash that signaled a demon’s death.  “No, don’t!”

“You killed an innocent woman,” Sam reminded him.  “My best friend, and who knows how many other people along the way.  All in the name of trying to make me into the Boy King.  The Devil’s True Vessel.”  His eyes grew brighter, his smile a brand of saccharine viciousness that made Brady’s pale in comparison.  “Time to reap what you’ve sown.”

The glow beneath the demon’s skin intensified.

Brady started screaming.

When Dean woke again, something in the air felt different.  He and Castiel were both clothed again, though the angel held him just as closely as he had when they’d fallen asleep.  “It’s time, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”  Castiel brushed a kiss along the back of Dean’s neck, his grip tightening just a fraction.  “Are you ready to come back now?”

“As I’ll ever be.”  Reluctantly, Dean levered himself into a sitting position, turning to face the place where the angel had been warm and protective against his back.

Gentle fingers found his jaw, grazed up the sides of his face and under the edge of the blindfold.  In a single, graceful glide, Castiel lifted the silk away from Dean’s eyes as the hunter opened them.

It was night surrounding them now.  The glass walls showed the surrounding verge cast in the brilliant blue-white light of a full moon, the shadows of this place still and unthreatening.  Dean sat quietly for a long moment, drinking in the quiet, the peace, the feel of his mate beside him.  The urgency of real life, banked for the time they’d been here, was starting to make itself known again, and Dean knew this could be the last truly tranquil moment they would ever have.  “Cas?”

“Yes, beloved?”  The angel was watching him, his face careful and his blue eyes intent in the dim light of the room.

Dean’s right hand reached out, finding Castiel’s left and tangling their fingers together.  “Side by side, to the end.  Right?”

“Always,” he promised at once.

“Then let’s kick it in the ass.”

A smile, at once nostalgic and hopeful.  “With pleasure.”

They landed in Bobby’s study.  The elder hunter had left the farmhouse hours earlier, intent on using his contacts among what was left of the hunting community to try and track down signs of Death’s location. Aziraphale was helping him, having no stomach for listening to even a demon as vile as the Handler being tortured.  Bobby looked up in surprise as they appeared.  “ ‘Bout damned time you idjits showed up,” he snapped.  “You two have any idea what’s been going on while you’ve been off canoodling?”

“I assumed that if something urgent had occurred, Gabriel would’ve contacted us.”  Castiel’s brow furrowed.  “What’s happened?”

“Sam’s torturing Pestilence’s Number Two, that’s what,” Bobby snapped.

Dean’s eyes went wide as saucers.  “What?!”

“Yeah.  As it turns out, the bastard’s been possessing a kid that was your brother’s best friend back in California.”  Bobby sat back, taking a long drink of the rotgut whiskey in the tumbler on his desk.  “And he’s the guy that murdered the girl Sam was set to marry back then the way Yellow Eyes did your mom.”

“So he’s got it coming to him,” Dean concluded.  “That still don’t make it a good idea!  Why isn’t anybody trying to stop him?  Where the fuck’s Gabriel in all this?”

“Gabriel is indisposed at the moment,” Aziraphale added quietly.  “Crowley and Abariel and Gamaliel are all still there, but the demon was ready to die rather than betray his masters and believed that exploiting Samuel’s temper was the best way to achieve it.  Gabriel used his bond with Sam to become a receptacle for your brother’s emotions, freeing him to interrogate the demon without risk of being provoked into executing him before we ascertain Pestilence’s location.”

Dean rounded on Castiel.  “I need to get there.  Right now.”

“Go,” Castiel urged.  “I will stay here to assist Bobby.”

Leaning in to brush a brief, grateful kiss across Castiel’s lips, Dean turned, crossed to Aziraphale and grabbed his hand.  “Let’s go.”

By the time they arrived, the screaming had gone quiet.  Crowley and Gamaliel were standing outside the door to the interrogation room, both looking strained and solemn.  “Is he in there?”

“Dean.”  Gamaliel stepped more fully into the door frame, blocking the threshold.  “He asked not to be disturbed.”

“Yeah, well, he don’t outrank me,” Dean snapped as he advanced.  When Gamaliel didn’t move, Dean stopped an inch from the angel’s armored chest, looking up into his emerald eyes.  “I like you, Mal.  Really do.  Don’t make me show you what happens to people that get between me and my brother.”

Half a breath passed, and then Gamaliel stepped aside.  Dean brushed past him with a brief ‘thank you’, and then he was in the room.

The demon was sagging limply in the chair, breathing labored.  Sweat had soaked through the business clothes he was wearing in dark patches, the rivulets streaming down his face streaked with the rusty color of dried blood.  Sam sat opposite him, once again with his legs crossed, fox eyes gleaming in the dim light.  Though Sam didn’t look like he’d so much as touched his victim, the air was drenched in agony.

Something in Dean flared in appreciation.  Something that wanted to join in.  To help.  To show his brother just how beautifully he could make their victim scream and sob and beg.

A worried pulse from Castiel helped him shove the impulse away.  “Sammy, what the Hell…?”

“Just a routine interrogation, Dean.”  Sam barely even looked up.  “Cas successfully fuck you back to sanity?  Or did they bring you back here because somebody got squeamish?”

“That’s enough, Sam.”  There was a cutting edge to Sam’s voice that made Dean twist inside.  “If he ain’t talked yet, he ain’t gonna.”

“You’re the torture expert,” Sam conceded pleasantly.  Standing up, he finally looked Dean’s way.  “Or so they keep telling me.”

“Look,” Dean snapped.  “You can keep coming after me all you want, but we both know this isn’t you.”

“No, Dean,” Sam returned coldly.  “This is me.  This is just me without all the bricks in the briefcase:  none of the guilt or the anger.  None of the empathy you hold in such contempt.  None of the longing for a life that was never possible.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you’d better go get it all back.”  Dean took another step towards him.  “Because this version of you’s kind’ve a dick.  Why else would you leave your mate twisting under the weight of all that for the sake of making this sorry imp scream when it’s not getting you anywhere?”

“A mate that’s a liability.”

It took everything Dean had in him to not take a step back in shock.  “What?”

“You heard me.”  Sam spread his hands, an expectant look on his face.  “Look at the plan logically, Dean:  we’re going to break this guy, and we’ll have Pestilence’s ring.  But even if we get Death’s, which is by no means a mortal lock, we still have to get both Michael and Lucifer in the Cage.  How exactly was everybody thinking we were gonna do that?  Jump out from behind a tree shouting ‘boo’ and hope it scares them into stumbling over the edge?”

“Sam…”

“No, Dean.”  Sam shook his head.  “Zachariah told you how to break the bond.  If I break my bond to Gabriel and let Lucifer have me, he’ll think he’s won.  I can fight the possession like Bobby did, take control of my body.  It’ll take Michael by surprise; give me enough time to jump into the Cage and drag him in with me.  It’s the only way this is going to work.”

“You don’t know that, Sam!” Dean shouted, panic starting to take hold.  “We don’t even know if the Cage will spit Adam back out; we’re not risking you, too!”

“Tell me what other options we have, then.”  Sam crossed his arms.  “Go on, Dean.  You’re the tactical genius in the family.  The scion of Michael, who’s supposed to be the greatest soldier to ever exist.  You tell me how else we’re supposed to get this done if I don’t break my mating bond and say yes.”

It was impossible to breathe.  Dean’s worst nightmare was coming true, the fears he’d confessed to Castiel coming to fruition before his eyes.

“You can’t,” Sam told him.  “Because there isn’t any other way.”  Uncrossing his arms, Sam closed the distance to his brother, gazing down at him with impartial hazel eyes.  “We tried, Dean.  We fought it as hard as we could and you protected me as long as you were able.  But we’re at the end of the line here.  You know I’m right.  So does Gabriel.  For his plan to work, I have to say yes.”

“You have to mean it, Sammy.”  The words choked out of Dean’s throat even as disbelief bloomed in his chest that he was saying them.  “You have to honestly, completely mean it when you say you want to be Lucifer’s Vessel and not Gabriel’s mate.”

Sam smiled, an expression lacking any of the warmth Dean had lived his entire life seeing there.  “That’s the beauty of it, Dean.  All of the weight Gabriel’s carrying for me right now?  As soon as I take it all back, I will mean it.  Not just because it’s the only way to win, but because it’ll feel like what I deserve.”

“You know that’s crap,” Dean sniped.  “You’re the one that’s been harping about we deserve better than what we’ve gotten our whole damn lives.”

“Maybe,” Sam conceded.  “Or maybe the one I’ve been trying to convince all this time has been myself.”  He glanced backwards at the demon.  “Take over if you want, or let somebody else do it.  I’m done with him anyway.”

And with that, without any trace of remorse or guilt, Sam stepped past his brother and left the room.


	7. Chapter 7

“Is he all right?”

Abariel looked up from where he was hovering over his archangel, who was currently curled into a tight ball and shaking on a filthy mattress that Gamaliel had dragged in from somewhere.  “Angels aren’t equipped to deal with human emotions,” he told Sam simply.  “It’s taken everything I have to keep him inside his own skin.  He’s gotten most of it locked down, but if this lasts much longer, there’s no telling how much control either of us will have over what happens next.”

Nodding once, Sam crossed the room and knelt onto the mattress beside his mate.  “Dean’s back; he’s going to close the deal,” he explained as he reached out, gathering the archangel into his arms as he eased the bond back open.

Drawn by their natural home, Sam’s emotions receded from Gabriel like a tide rolling back.  Abariel dug deep into his grace, redoubling his efforts and spreading his focus to include Sam as well even as tears spilled from the human’s eyes and he tightened his grip on his still-trembling mate.

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered, the words choked with tears.  “I’m so sorry, Gabriel.”

There was no sound for a long moment.  And then a quiet, heartfelt sob came from the smaller being’s throat as the archangel let his own tears fall.

With a whisper to Gamaliel’s mind to keep him apprised, Abariel whisked the mourning lovers far away.

The chair scraped across the floor as Dean dragged it out of the devil’s trap, resisting the urge to break it over the demon’s head as he began to laugh weakly.  “Glad we’re providing a show for you; you ain’t getting a last meal.”

“And quite the show it is,” Brady managed, lifting his head to look up as Dean circled him.  “I had no idea that the intrepid ‘Team Free Will’ was so fractious on the inside.”

Dean grabbed the demon by the jaw, forcing his head back.  “You think Sam exorcising you inside that meat sack hurt?” he snarled.  “Keep talking.  I’ll show you some moves that even had Alastair screaming.”

Another laugh.  Stronger this time.  “I’m sure you can, champ… but you won’t get the chance.  Because now that you’re back, that means we can collect the whole set.”

“What do you mean?” Dean growled.

Before the demon could answer, there was a baying howl in the distance that made Dean’s blood run cold.

The demon saw his pupils dilate in fear and grinned.  “I might be reduced to little more than this pathetic meat sack thanks to Crowley’s mutilations, but you just broke the trap, Dean… and now the hounds have my scent.”  Another howl, closer this time, and Brady’s laughter turned maniacal.  “You think they’ll leave any of you alive?”

Dean swore viciously, releasing the demon and crossing to the boarded window in two strides.  He had no idea whether or not he would still be able to see the beasts, but they sounded closer than he wanted to think about.  “Crowley!”

“He’s gone.”  Gamaliel entered the room, daggers drawn and wings unfurled but tucked close to his body.  “So is Aziraphale.”

“What?!”  Dean rounded on the angel, ignoring Brady’s choke in the background.  “Where?”

“I don’t know.”  Crossing to Dean’s side, the red-headed angel looked drawn but determined.  “We heard the howls, and Crowley muttered something about hating having to call in favors.  They exchanged a look and then both of them vanished.”  Another series of snarling howls.  “They’re getting closer.”

“No shit,” Dean snapped before pitching his voice to a bellow.  “Sammy!  Time to go!”

“He’s already gone; Gabriel, too,” Gamaliel told him.  “Abbi pulled them out after Sam-”

“Yeah, okay.”  Running a hand through his hair, Dean looked out the window again.  He wasn’t sure if he was really seeing the dark shapes in the distance, or if it was fear and memory commingling.  “We gotta move.”

“They’re right on top of us.”  The Power’s entire body seemed to coil like a spring.  “Stay or go, we’ll need to fight our way through them; difficult enough with one, but they’ve sent an entire pack.”  Seeing Dean’s eyes widen for half a heartbeat, Gamaliel’s wings stretched into an almost protective arch.  “If we can get you inside a protective enclosure-”

“They’ll just wait.”  Brady’s voice cut into their discussion, smug and derisive.  “They’ll tear the angel apart like a chew toy and then wait until you can’t stay still any longer, and anybody that comes back looking will just be more meat for the slaughter.”

Another howl, pacing outside the house.  Something in Dean snapped at it.  Without warning, he lunged back to the trussed-up demon, Castiel’s sword in hand as he hauled the demon up by the front of his shirt, chair and all.  “You don’t get it,” he growled, low and deadly.  “All you demons… all the angels tryin’ to wipe this planet out… you just don’t get it, do you?”

A chuckle rolled in Brady’s throat.  “Get what, champ?”

Something in the hunter shifted, seeking.  Dean barely heard Gamaliel call his name in warning, focused on the demon in his grip whose eyes were slowly widening, his skin going even paler than it had from blood loss and exhaustion from what Sam had done to him.  He knew what the demon was seeing.

The smile that curled across his face was sharp as the edge of the seraphic short sword that he dragged down the side of Brady’s face, cutting deep enough to touch the delicate bone beneath.  “Me and Sammy?” he answered.  “We’re the ones you should be afraid of.

“Now, you’re gonna tell me what we need to know,” Dean continued, his voice deceptively pleasant despite the incipient attack.  “Or I promise:  no matter who else is on my list,  I’ll be starting with you.”

The sound of glass shattering.  Gamaliel spun, dropping into a defensive crouch as he faced the door.  Dean could see the reflection of his own face in the pure black of Brady’s eyes.

“Okay!”  Panic had gripped the demon, as if he’d suddenly realized that he was trapped between two unstoppable forces.  “Okay, I’ll tell you; but you’ve gotta get me the Hell out of here first!”

“Mal?” Dean asked, dropping the demon and moving around him to cut the bindings around his chest.

“We’re cornered,” came the grim reply.

“You can’t angel us out?” Dean asked briefly.

Before Gamaliel could answer, there was a soundless pop.  Crowley stood there as if he’d been in the room the entire time, his expression almost bored.  “I hope you lot appreciate the lengths I’m going to on your behalf,” he groused.  “I’m burning through quite a few I.O.U.s in the name of saving your collective arses.”

“Where the Hell have you been?” Dean snapped, keeping Castiel’s sword trained on Brady.

“Getting reinforcements,” Crowley answered.  Another growl, deeper and full of challenge, sounded from the main room of the house.  “There they are now.”  He gestured at the door.  “Shall we go?”

“The pack’s moving away,” Gamaliel confirmed.  “We might be able to slip past them.”

Keeping Brady out front, Dean gestured with the blade in his hand.  Gamaliel took position behind Dean, with Crowley just behind.  They slid along the wall, trying to keep from attracting the hounds’ attention.  With a sick wrench in his stomach, Dean couldn’t talk himself out of the confirmation that he could still see them:  half a dozen, huge and black and menacing, eyes gleaming in the aether.

To human eyes, the animal they were facing down was a mongrel dog with a twisted ear, hardly a quarter of their size.  And yet Dean could see that it was a deception:  a glamour to hide his true form from those without Sight.  The real hound challenging the pack was larger than any of the others, his stance fiercely protective of the blonde man standing beside him with a hand calmly resting between the hound’s massive shoulders.

“Dog,” the young man said, his tone at once commanding and utterly confident.  “Get them.”

The giant hound attacked.

Unable to watch the ensuing melee, Dean shoved Brady forward as the four of them broke for the door.  Sam had driven the warding supplies to the site using one of the cars Bobby had restored at the salvage yard, and Dean almost stumbled in relief as he slid into the driver’s seat and found the keys in the visor.  “We can’t leave that guy in there,” he snapped at Crowley.

“He wouldn’t leave that hound behind on a bet,” Crowley returned.  “Besides, I’d bet ten on the Rack his pup wins.”

“That’s no ordinary man,” Gamaliel reassured Dean.  “He stands a better chance in there than the rest of us combined.”

Cursing again, Dean shoved the key in the ignition and cranked it over.  The car roared to life even as squeals of canine pain were heard from inside the house, and Dean had barely gotten the car into gear before they were peeling out, leaving the ruined building and a cloud of dust behind them.

By the time they returned to the salvage yard, the worst of Dean’s shadows and of his fear had drained away.  An emptiness was left in their wake, so cold that it was a struggle to keep his teeth from chattering, obliterating the comfortable warmth that had been the remnants of his recent escape with Castiel.

Castiel had sensed it all the moment Dean’s energy had dropped too low to shield from his mate, and he, Bobby and Aziraphale were waiting outside the house when they pulled in.  The sight of his angel waiting for him almost drove tears to Dean’s eyes, and he climbed from the car wanting nothing more than to fall into Castiel’s arms.

But that would have to keep a while longer.  He turned on Brady instead, feeling the phalanx of his friends and allies forming behind him.  “Where?”

A sneer twisted across the demon’s face a half second before he turned, bolting towards the first line of wrecks.  With a snarled epithet, Dean started to give chase-

And found himself stopping short when the demon slammed into a wall in the air, stumbling back as if he’d just taken a hit from a wrecking ball.

It took a moment for Dean to realize that there was a salt circle on the ground.  The opening he’d driven the car through was being assiduously closed by Bobby and Castiel, with Crowley stepping out of it before their lines could meet and crossing to Aziraphale’s side.  Dean regarded Brady coldly as the demon staggered around to face him, his own eyes glinting dangerously in the moonlight.  “Nowhere to run, asshole.”

Brady looked up, chagrined, and shrugged.  “Can’t blame a demon for trying.”

“Yeah, actually:  I can.”  Dean brought up the point of Castiel’s sword, slowly stalking towards him.  “Last time:  where are we going to find your boss?”

“You can’t win,” Brady hedged.  “You think it’s going to do you any good to know where he is?  To try and stop his mission?  You’re human; he’ll turn your innards to sludge with a _thought_ the moment you get near him.”

Dean said nothing.  He simply advanced, backing the demon towards the salt barrier again.

His shoulder grazed the shield wall and Brady lifted his hands, warding Dean back and offering submission at the same time.  “Okay!  Okay, okay… Davenport, Iowa.  There’s a little place he likes to drop by in between runs:  Serenity Valley Convalescent Home.”  At Dean’s quirked eyebrow, Brady shrugged.  “Something about the name entertains him.”

Not even pretending to turn his back on the cornered imp, Dean paused.  “Crowley?”

“He’s not lying,” the demon confirmed.  “It’s good.”

Dean nodded.  Without another word, he began stalking towards Brady again, Castiel’s sword held low.  Brady saw it and tried to edge away from Dean, skirting the edge of the circle.  “Sam won’t like it.”

“Maybe,” Dean replied, his voice once again deadly quiet.  “But Sam’s got better things to do right now than drink your blood.”

Brady smiled, sensing a weak spot and going after it in an instant.  “Might as well be me that’s the first.  After all, he’s going to need a lot of it if he’s going to hold Lucifer.”

“Shut up.”  Dean paced closer, ignoring the quiet sounds of dismay from outside the circle and eyeing the path that Brady was aiming for.

“You know it’s true,” Brady kept on, looking for an exit, an advantage.  Anything he could use in a cage match with Michael’s Vessel.  “And what’s more is you know how bad he wants it, too.  He misses it, doesn’t he, Dean?  Misses feeling like he has control; like he can be more than just the boy in your bitch seat.”  Dean said nothing, eyes never flickering, even as Brady circled past the car and fought to keep from tripping over the fender as he cut towards it too tightly.  “You never wondered why it’s always been so _easy_ for us to slip into his blind spots, Dean?  Why he _never_ sees us coming?”

Dean stalked his prey.  The words were meaningless.  Tuned out.  The last defense of a cornered animal.

“Never wondered if maybe it’s because he’s more like us than you want to believe?” Brady taunted.  “That that’s what it takes to be Lucifer’s Vessel?  That the only difference between him and me is that _his Hell is right here_?”

A movement towards the circle.  Brady caught the motion in his peripheral vision and dodged, trying to evade being outflanked by an angel before he could gain the upper hand.  In a heartbeat, Dean was on him, the seraphic blade in his hand buried deep in Brady’s chest with a single hard thrust.

The face of Sam’s first college friend twisted into a grimace of pain.  A series of flashes flickered under the pale skin, and then the muscles went slack, the demon’s essence draining away as the body crumpled.  With a contemptuous shove, Dean freed his mate’s blade, pulling a cloth from his pocket and cleaning the blood off as he let the corpse drop to the ground in a broken heap.

“Interesting theory,” he murmured.  When Castiel joined him, Dean gladly turned his face away from his most recent kill.  “Probably oughtta give you this back, huh?”

“It has been safe with you,” Castiel replied, accepting it as Dean offered him the hilt.  “But I doubt I’ll be able to do without it for much longer.”

Dean nodded.  “So where exactly are Sammy and Gabe?” he asked Gamaliel.

“In the haven you and Castiel were using,” the Power answered, his own gaze flickering to the body inside the salt circle.  “They need some time.”

For a moment, no one spoke.  Given what had happened, Dean was more than willing to give the archangel time to talk Sam out of the insanity he’d proposed back at the ruined house.  Finally, though, Dean couldn’t stand still for another moment.  “Bobby, we need to get this guy wrapped up.  Where you keeping the funeral supplies?”

“You’re giving a _demon_ a hunter’s funeral?” Bobby asked, incredulous.

“I’m giving Sammy’s friend a funeral,” Dean corrected.  “There wasn’t always a demon under his skin… and when Sammy comes to his senses, it’s what he’d want.  I want this guy ready to burn when Sam gets back.”

It took Bobby a moment, but he eventually nodded and went into the house to fetch what they would need.

The next few hours were busy.  Brady’s body was washed and anointed, dressed with sacred herbs and wrapped in linen.  The pyre was built at the edge of the salvage yard, where it wouldn’t be immediately noticed that they were burning a body.  Castiel had left just long enough to bring Dean an apple pie still warm from the baker’s oven, and he ate it at Bobby’s kitchen table with Castiel at his elbow, feeding the angel a bite every so often and smiling at the way his mate seemed to analyze the flavor as compared to the other types of pie Dean had introduced him to.

He hadn’t put his shields back up, despite his normal impulse to hide how raw he was feeling from his mate.  Reassurance flowed back to him from Castiel along their bond, the arm that Castiel had slipped around his waist remaining firmly in place.   _Side by side…_

When he saw Aziraphale suddenly come to his feet in Bobby’s study, Dean had only a moment to go tense before the angel was being hugged warmly by the blonde man that had drawn off the hellhound attack.  “Adam!  Thank Heaven you’re all right; I was beginning to fret.”

“Heaven di’n’t have much t’do with it,” Adam replied.  “Dog took good care of that lot, though.  Had to see him home before I could come let you know ‘bout it.”

“Told you his pup’d win,” Crowley bragged, stepping in for a firm handshake.  “Dean,  meet Adam Young:  antichrist.”

Dean’s brow furrowed in surprise even as he urged Castiel up from their seat and stepped around him towards the newcomer.  “You mean like Jesse?”

“Exactly like,” Adam confirmed, taking stock of the human with a glance.  Dean had an uncomfortable sense that the boy could see right through him and everything he’d ever tried to hide.  “And you needn’t worry ‘bout him, either.  M’wife and I took him in.”

Castiel’s eyes went wide; in his own way, he’d worried about the boy’s fate, whether he’d been trying to live in the world on his own or had been located by the forces of Hell to use for their own ends.  “You found him?”

Adam shrugged carelessly.  “Wasn’t that hard; just have to know how to look for us, is all.”

“To be fair,” Aziraphale put in pertly, “ _you_ managed to hide yourself away from both Crowley and myself for more than a decade.”

“Only b’cause you were both lookin’ in entirely the wrong place,” Adam returned just as archly.  “S’not my fault you couldn’t tell us all apart.”

“But he’s all right?” Dean pressed.

“Oh, yeah.  Pep rolls her eyes a lot, but he’s a big help about the house, ‘specially now she’s expecting.”  Something about Adam glowed, as if he was caught by a radiant happiness at the thought of his family.  “I’d best be getting back though; I just wanted to let you know that it came out all right.”

“I owe you a debt,” Castiel informed him gravely.  “Your intervention saved Dean’s life.”

“We’ll call it even if you can keep the rest of your lot from destroying ev’rything,” Adam replied, his expression faintly stern.  “I’d rather like my daughter to get to grow up in Tadfield, ‘f it’s all the same t’you.  Hell on Earth isn’t my idea of a proper alternative.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Dean promised.

Adam nodded, and in a blink, he was gone.

Sam and Gabriel hadn’t returned.  Abariel had come back around midnight, citing that he’d done all he could for the lovers and that what they needed just now was to be left alone.  It was easy for Castiel to sense that the Virtue had been more than a little unsettled by the events of the day, and that he was motivated as much by Sam and Gabriel’s need for privacy as he was by his own need to find comfort in Gamaliel’s arms.

His own mate had been completely unable to sleep in the house.  Despite keeping himself as still as he could to avoid jostling Castiel, the angel had easily sensed the restiveness in Dean’s soul that was translating into his entire body.

He didn’t need the bond to know what had Dean so upset.  Or what his human needed to settle himself.

When reality compressed and then smoothed back out, Dean found himself blinking up at his mate in the back seat of the Impala.  A blanket was spread out between their bodies and the leather upholstery, and Castiel was skimming gentle fingers along the brand on his right shoulder.  “Cas?”

“I thought you might sleep a little better if you were at home,” Castiel told him gently.  He saw Dean’s face contract at the words, tears threatening at the edges, and gathered Dean close to his bare chest.  In an instant, Dean’s arms were around him, gripping with all his strength, his face buried into Castiel’s neck and his whole body trembling.  “It’s all right, beloved,” Castiel soothed.

“How can you say that?” Dean accused, not moving from where he was burrowed into Castiel’s embrace.  “How the fuck can you say that when Sam’s planning to throw us all away?”

“That’s not what he’s doing,” Castiel refuted.  He pressed gentling kisses to Dean’s hair, to the curve of his shoulder.  “He’s doing what he thinks he has to do to save the world.”

“The world can go to Hell for all I care,” Dean snapped.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I mean!”  He shoved Castiel away from him with all his strength, his eyes flashing even in the darkness.  “I don’t give a damn!  About any of it!  Not if it means losing Sam in the bargain.  And don’t you tell me what I mean, Cas:  not when you’ve known from the jump that this is the package.”

For a handful of heartbeats, Castiel just sat there, crouched by the back left door and watching his human.  His mate.  His beautiful, stubborn, improbable hunter, who had pushed himself back against the opposite door and was trying so hard to stay implacable.  Even now, Castiel could see the edges of Dean’s resolve crumbling under the weight of their predicament’s reality.  Could feel the way Dean radiated distress at the mere thought of letting Sam go willingly into Lucifer’s clutches.

To Dean, letting Sam say ‘yes’ to Lucifer was the same as letting Sam commit suicide.

“I know,” Castiel conceded, staying where he was even as Dean’s body started to uncurl, to slide back towards the beckoning safety of Castiel’s arms.  “I don’t want him to do it, either, Dean.  Not just because it will be handing Lucifer an unimaginable advantage, but because Sam is my brother now, too.  I cannot imagine what it must be like for you, or Gabriel, to have to face this.”

“Then help us talk some sense into him!” Dean pleaded.  “Cas, you _can’t_ take his side here.  You just can’t.  You’ve gotta help me talk him down.”

“If you were in his place,” Castiel asked suddenly, “would you give me up?”  He watched Dean stiffen, knowing that the question called back to the not-so-long-ago moment when Dean almost had.  “If there was no other option… truly no other way to keep Lucifer and Michael from destroying each other and the world with them… would you give up our mating, and agree to be Michael’s Vessel?”

A hard, shuddering breath left Dean; just barely a sob.  “That’s not the same,” Dean protested weakly.

“Why?” Castiel pressed.  “Are you so much less loved than your brother, Dean?  If your situations were reversed, would Sam not be pleading with Gabriel to help change your mind before it came to pass?  Wouldn’t you say it was the only way, and that it was your responsibility because you broke the First Seal by accepting Alastair’s offer and torturing souls in Hell?”  Before Dean could answer, Castiel reached out, sliding an arm around Dean’s shoulders and gathering him close again.  “I understand, Dean.  Believe me:  what Sam is proposing is the very last thing any of us want.  But we are running out of options, and time.  If this is truly the only way to stop the Apocalypse, then we owe Sam the dignity of his sacrifice.”

Tears ran free at the word ‘sacrifice’, and Dean burrowed back into Castiel again.  “I hate this.”

“So do I,” Castiel told him.  His hand drew down Dean’s spine in long, soothing strokes, his wing shadows slipping free to wrap around Dean’s body in a comforting blanket.

Sam and Gabriel would eventually return.  The body of Sam’s friend still needed to be burned and put to its final rest.  The spread of the Croatoan virus had to be stopped before it could begin.  Pestilence had to be hunted down.  Death still evaded them.  Michael and Lucifer were still preparing themselves for their final confrontation.

But in this moment, all Castiel wanted in the world was to be able to tell Dean that, come what may, Sam would not have to give himself over as Lucifer’s Vessel.  And it was the one thing that he knew in the depths of his grace he couldn’t do for the man he loved so deeply.

_Forgive me, Father… but why must it hurt so much to do Your Will?_

Lost in his own hurt, in the ache of impending grief, it startled Castiel to feel Dean lean up and brush those generous lips against his own, soft and forgiving.  “Don’t leave me?” the hunter asked, voice quiet and tentative.

“Never,” Castiel promised.  He had turned his face from Heaven to be with this man.  Had fought through Hell to win him.  Had nearly given his life to protect him, and would again.  At every crossroads, he would always choose the path that Dean Winchester walked.

That much, in the end, was the only comfort the Sanctuary of God could offer the Righteous Man.

As Dean let himself fall asleep in his arms, breath finally slowing to a gentle, even rhythm, Castiel closed his eyes and let himself drift on the currents of the love that, no matter how much Dean otherwise shielded, Castiel could always feel flowing in a steady river from Dean’s soul into his grace across their bond.

Though it might all be shattered in the coming days, in this tranquil moment, it was enough.

  
  


  
  



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